



l^^q 



Life of 



Robert Burns. 



33^ 



/y63 



MOSTLY BY 



Thomas Carlyle, 



New York: 

Delisser & Procter, 508 Broadway. 

1859. 



^2. 

1 






,■3^ 



.•• -•- •< 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



The readers of the " Household Library" 
will certainly welcome a Life of Burns. 
That his soul was of the real heroic stamp, 
no one who is familiar with his imperishable 
lyric poetry, will deny. , 

This Life of the great Scottish bard is 
composed of two parts. The first part, 
which is brief, and gives merely his external 
life, is taken from the " Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica." The principle object of it, in this 
place, is to prepare the reader for what fol- 
lows. The second part is a grand spiritual 
portrait of Burns, the like of which the ages 
have scarcely produced ; the equal of which, 



Editor^ s Preface, 



in our opinion, does not exist. In fact, since 
men began to write and publish their thoughts 
in this world, no one has appeared who equals 
Carlyle as a spiritual-portrait painter ; and, 
taken all in all, this of his gifted country- 
man Burns is his master-piece. I should 
not dare to say how many times I have 
perused it, and always with new wonder and 
delight. I once read it in the Manfrini Pal- 
ace, at Venice, sitting before Titian's por- 
trait of Ariosto. Great is the contrast 
between the Songs of Burns and the Rime 
of the Italian poet, between the fine spiritual 
perception of Carlyle's mind and the delicate 
touch of Titian's hand, between picturesque 
expression and an expressive picture; yet 
this very antithesis seemed to prepare my 
mind for the full enjoyment of both these 
famous portraits; the sombre majesty of 
northern genius seemed to heighten and be 
heightened by the sunset glow of the genius 
of the south. 

Besides giving the article from the "En- 
cyclopedia Britamiica," as a kind of frame for 



Editor'' s PrefaGe. 



the portrait of Burns, we will here add, from 
the " English Cyclopedia," a sketch of Car- 
lyle's life. A severe taste may find it a little 
out of place, yet we must be allowed to con- 
sult the wishes of those for whom these little 
volumes are designed. 

Carlyle, (Thomas,) a thinker and writer, 
confessedly among the most original and in- 
fluential that Britain has produced, was born 
in the parish of Middlebie, near the village 
of Ecclefcchan, in Dumfries-shire, Scotland, 
on the 4th of December, 1795. His father, 
a man of remarkable force of character, Was 
a small farmer in comfortable circumstances ; 
his mother was also no ordinary person. The 
eldest son of a considerable family, he re- 
ceived an education the best in its kind that 
Scotland could then afford — the education of 
a pious and industrious home, supplemented 
by that of school and college. (Another 
son of the family, Dr. John A. Carlyle, a 
younger brother of Thomas, was educated in 
2ii similar mamier, and, after practising for 



Editor^ s Preface. 



many years as a physician in Germany and 
Rome, has recently become known in British 
literature as the author of the best prose 
translation of Dante.) After a few years 
spent at the ordinary parish school, Thomas 
was sent, in his thirteenth or fourteenth year, 
to the grammar school of the neighboring 
town of Annan ; and here it was ..that he 
first became acquainted with a man destined, 
like himself, to a career of great celebrity. 
" The first time I saw Edward Irving," writes 
Mr. Carlyle in 1835, "was six-and-twenty 
years ago, in his native town, Annan. He 
was fresh from Edinburgh, with college 
prizes, high character, and promise : he had 
come to see our school-master, who had also 
been his. We heard of famed professors — 
of high matters, classical, mathematical — a 
whole Wonderland of knowledge ; nothing but 
joy, health, hopefulness without end, looked 
out from the blooming young man." Irving 
was then sixteen years of age, Carlyle four- 
teen; and from that time till Irving's sad 
and premature death, the two were intimate 



Editor^ s Preface. 7 

and constant friends. It was not long before 
Carlyle followed Irving to that " Wonder- 
land of Knowledge," the University of Edin- 
burgh, of which, and its " famed professors," 
he had received such tidings. If the descrip- 
tion of the nameless German university, 
however, in " Sartor Resartus," is to be sup- 
posed as allusive also to Mr. Carlyle's own 
reminiscences of his training at Edinburgh, 
he seems afterwards to have held the more 
formal or academic part of that training in 
no very high respect. " What vain jargon 
of controversial metaphysic, etymology, and 
mechanical manipulation, falsely named sci- 
ence, was current there," says Teufelsdrockh ; 
" I indeed learned better perhaps than most." 
At Edinburgh, the professor of " controver- 
sial metaphysic" in Carlyle's day, was Dr. 
Thomas Brown, Dugald Stewart having then 
just retired ; physical science and mathemat- 
ics, were represented by Playfair and Sir 
John Leslie, and classical studies by men 
less known to fame. While at college, Car- 
lyle's special bent, so far as the work of the 



Editor'' s Preface, 



classes was concerned, seems to have been 
to mathematics and natural philosophy. But 
it is rather by his voluntary studies and 
readings, apart from the work of the classes, 
that Mr. Carlyle, in his youth, laid the found- 
ation of his vast and varied knowledge. 
The college session in Edinburgh extends 
over about half the year, from November to 
April ; and during these months, the college 
library, and other such libraries as were ac- 
cessible, were laid under contribution by 
him to an extent till then hardly paralleled 
by any Scottish student. Works on science 
and mathematics, works on philosophy, his- 
tories of all ages, and the great classics of 
British literature, were read by him miscel- 
laneously or in orderly succession; and it 
was at this period, also, if we are not mis- 
taken, he commenced his studies — not very 
usual then in Scotland — in the foreign lan- 
guages of modern Europe. With the same 
diligence, and in very much the same way, 
w^ere the summer vacations employed, dur- 
ing which he generally returned to his fa- 



Editor'' s Preface. 



tiler's house in Dumfries shire, or rambled 
among the hills and moors of that neighbor- 
hood. 

Mr. Carlyle had begun his studies with a 
view to entering the Scottish Church. About 
the time, however, when these studies were 
nearly ended, and when, according to the 
ordinary routine, he might have become a 
preacher, a change of views induced him to 
abandon the intended profession. This ap- 
pears to have been about the year 1819 or 
1820, when he was twenty-four years of age. 
For some time, he seems to have been un- 
certain as to his future course. Along with 
Irving, he employed himself for a year or 
two, as a teacher in Fifeshire ; but gradually 
it became clear to him, that his true voca- 
tion was that of literature. Accordingly, 
parting from Irving, about the year 1822, 
the younger Scot of Annandale, deliberately 
embraced the alternative open to him, and 
became a general man of letters. Probably 
few have ever embraced that profession with 
qualifications so wide, or with aims so high 



10 Editor'' s Preface, 

and severe. Apart altogether from his dili- 
gence in learning, and from the extraordi- 
nary amount of acquired knowledge of all 
kinds, which was the fruit of it, there had 
been remarked in him, from the first, a strong 
originality of character, a noble earnestness 
and fervor in all that he said or did, and a 
vein of inherent constitutional contempt for 
the mean and the frivolous, inclining him, in 
some degree, to a life of isolation and soli- 
tude. Add to this, that his acquaintance 
with German literature, in particular, had 
familiarized him with ideas, modes of think- 
ing, and types of literary character, not then 
generally known in this country, and yet, in 
his opinion, more deserving of being known 
than much of a corresponding kind that was 
occupying and ruling British thought. 

The first period of Mr. Carlyle's literary 
life may be said to extend from 1822 to 
1827, or from his twenty-sixth to his thirty- 
second year. It was during this period that 
he produced (besides a translation of Legen- 
dre's " Geometry," to which he prefixed an 



Editor^s Preface. 11 

" Essay on Proportion,") his numerous well- 
knov/n translations from German writers, 
and also his " Life of Schiller." The latter 
and a considerable proportion of the former, 
were written by him during the leisure af- 
forded him by an engagement he had formed 
in 1823, as tutor to Charles Buller, whose 
subsequent brilliant though brief career in 
the politics of Britain, gives interest to this 
connection. The first part of the " Life of 
Schiller" appeared originally in the " London 
Magazine," of which John Scott was editor, 
and Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Allan Cunning- 
ham, De Quincey, and Hood, were the best 
known supporters ; and the second and third 
parts, were published in the same magazine 
in 1824. In this year appeared also the 
translation of Gothe's " "Wilhelm Meister," 
which was published by Messrs. Oliver and 
Boyd, of Edinburgh, without the translator's 
name. This translation, the first real intro- 
duction of Gothe to the reading world of 
Great Britain, attracted much notice. " The 
translator," said a critic in " Blackwood," 



12 Editor^ s Preface. 

"is, we understand, a young gentleman in 
this city, who now for the first time appears 
before the public. We congratulate him on 
his very promising debut ; and would fain 
hope to receive a series of really good trans- 
lations from his hand. He has evidently a 
perfect knowledge of German; he already 
writes English better than is at all common, 
even at this time ; and we know of no exer- 
cise more likely to produce effects of perma- 
nent advantage upon a young mind of intel- 
lectual ambition." Tlie advice here given to 
Mr. Carlyle by his critic, was followed by 
him in so far that, in 1827, he published in 
Edinburgh, his " Specimens of German Eo- 
mance," in four volumes ; one of these con- 
taining "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre," 
as a fresh specimen of Gothe ; the others 
containing tales from Jean Paul, Tieck, Mu- 
saius, and Hoffman. Meanwhilo, in 1825, 
Mr. Carlyle had revised and enlarged his 
" Life of Schiller," and given it to the world 
in a separate form, through the press of 
Messrs. Taylor and Hessay, the proprietors 



Editor'' s Preface. 13 

of the " London Magazine." In the same 
year, quitting his tutorship of Charles Bul- 
ler, he had married a lady fitted in a pre- 
eminent degree to be the wife of such a man. 
(It is interesting to know that Mrs. Carlyle, 
originally Miss Welch, is a lineal descendent 
of the Scottish Reformer, Knox.) For some 
time after the marriage, Mr. Carlyle con- 
tinued to reside in Edinburgh ; but before 
1827 he removed to Craigenputtoch, a small 
property in the most solitary part of Dum- 
fries-shire. 

The second period of Mr. Carlyle's liter- 
ary life, extending from 1827 to 1834, or 
from his thirty-second to his thirty-ninth 
year, was the period of the first decided 
manifestations of his extraordinary originality 
as a thinker. Probably the very seclusion 
in which he lived helped to develope, in 
stronger proportions, his native and peculiar 
tendencies. The following account of his 
place and mode of life at this time was sent 
by him, in 1828, to Gothe, with whom he 
was then in correspondence, and was pub- 



14 Editor^ s Preface. 

lished by the great German in the preface to 
a German translation of the " Life of Schil- 
ler," executed under his immediate care : — 
" Dumfries is a pleasant town, containing 
about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and to be 
considered the centre of the trade and judi- 
cial system of a district which possesses 
some importance in the sphere of Scottish 
activity. Our residence is not in the town 
itself, but fifteen miles to the northwest of it, 
among the granite hills and the black mo- 
rasses Avhich stretch westward through Gal- 
loway almost to the Irish Sea. In this 
wilderness of heath and rock, our estate 
stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, 
partly inclosed and planted ground, where 
corn ripens and trees afford a shade, al- 
though surrounded by sea-mews and rough- 
woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, 
have we built and furnished a neat, substan- 
tial dwelling ; here, in the absence of a pro- 
fessional or other office, we live to cultivate 
literature according to our strength, and in 
our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful 



Editor'' s Preface. 15 

growth to the roses and flowers of our gar- 
den ; we hope for health and peaceful 
thoughts to further our aims. The roses, 
indeed, are still in part to be planted, but 
they blossom already in anticipation. Two 
ponies w^hich carry us every where, and the 
mountain air, are the best medicine for weak 
nerves. This daily exercise, to which I am 
much devoted, is my only recreation; for 
this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain — 
six miles removed from any one likely to 
visit me. Here Eousseau would have been 
as happy as on his island of Saint-Pierre. 
My to^vn friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn 
here to a similar disposition, and forbode 
me no good result ; but I came hither solely 
w^ith the design to simplify my way of life, 
and to secure the independence through 
which I could be enabled to remain true to 
myself. This bit of earth is our own ; here 
we can live, write, and think, as best pleases 
ourselves, even though Zoilus himself were 
to be crowned the monarch of literature. 
Nor is the solitude of such great importance. 



16 Editor^ s Preface. 

for a stage-coach takes us speedily to Edin- 
burgh, which we look upon as our British 
Weimar ; and have I not, too, at this mo- 
ment, piled upon the table of my little 
library, a whole cart-load of French, Ger- 
man, American, and English journals and 
periodicals — whatever may be their worth ? 
Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack." 
Before this letter was written, Mr. Carlyle 
had already begun the w^ell-known series of 
his contributions to the "Edinburgh Re- 
view." The first of these was his essay on 
"Jean Paul," which appeared in 1827; and 
was followed by his striking article on " Ger- 
man Literature," and by his singularly beau- 
tiful essay on "Burns" (1828). Other 
essays in the same periodical followed, as 
well as articles in the " Foreign Quarterly 
Review," which was established in 1828, 
and shorter articles of less importance in 
Brewster's " Edinburgh Encyclopedia," then 
in course of publication. Externally, in 
short, at this time, Mr. Oarlyle w^as a writer 
for reviews and magazines, choosing to live, 



Editor'' s Preface. 17 

for the convenience of his work and the sat- 
isfaction of his own tastes, in a retired nook 
of Scotland, whence he could correspond 
w^ith his friends, occasionally visit the near- 
est of them, and occasionally also receive 
visits from them in turn. Among the friends 
whom he saw in his occasional visits to Edin- 
burgh, were Jeffrey, Wilson, and other liter- 
ary celebrities of that capital (Sir Walter 
Scott, we believe, he never met otherwise 
than casually in the streets) ; among the 
more distant friends who visited him, none 
was more welcome than the American Emer- 
son, who, having already been attracted to 
him by his writings, made a journey to 
Dumfries-shire, during his first visit to En- 
gland, expressly to see him; and of his 
foreign correspondents, the most valued by 
far was Gothe, whose death in 1832, and 
that of Scott in the same year, impressed 
him deeply, and were fuiely commemorated 
by him. 

Meanwhile, though thus ostensibly but an 
occasional contributor to ^periodicals, Mr. 
2 



18 Editor'' s Preface. 

Carlyle was silently throwing his whole 
strength into a work which was to reveal 
him in a far other character than that of a 
mere literary critic, however able and pro- 
found. * This was his " Sartor Resartus ;" or, 
an imaginary History of the Life and Opin- 
ions of Herr Teufelsdrockh, an eccentric 
German professor and philosopher. Under 
this quaint guise (the name " Sartor Resar- 
tus" being, it would appear, a translation 
into Latin of " The Tailor done over," which 
is the title of an old Scottish song), Mr. 
Carlyle propounded, in a style half-serious 
and half-grotesque, and in a manner far more 
bold and trenchant than the rules of review- 
writing permitted, his own philosophy of 
life and society in almost all their bearings. 
The work was truly an anomaly in British 
literature, exhibiting a combination of deep, 
speculative power, poetical genius, and lofty 
moral purpose, with wild and riotous humor 
and shrewd observation and satire, such as 
had rarely been seen ; and coming into the 
midst of the more conventional British liter- 



Editor'' s Preface, 19 

ature of the day, it was like a fresh but bar- 
baric blast from the hills and moorlands 
amid which it had been conceived. But the 
very strangeness and originality of the work 
prevented it from finding a publisher ; and 
after the manuscript had been returned by 
several London firms to whom it was offered, 
the author was glad to cut it into parts and 
publish it piecemeal in " Frazer's Magazine." 
Here it appeared in the course of 1833-34, 
scandalising most readers by its Gothic mode 
of thought and its extraordinary torture, as 
it was called, of the English language ; but 
eagerly read by some sympathetic mmds, 
who discerned in the writer a new power in 
literature, and wondered who and what he 
was. 

With the publication of the " Sartor Re- 
sartus" papers, the third period of Mr. Car- 
lyle's literary life may be said to begin. It 
was during the negotiations for the publica- 
tion tha the was led to contemplate remov- 
ing to London — a step which he finally took, 
we believe, in 1834. Since that year — the 



20 Editor's Preface. 

thirty-ninth of his life— Mr. Carlyle has 
permanently resided in London, in a house 
situated in one of the quiet streets run- 
ning at right angles to the River Thames, 
at Chelsea. The change into the bustle of 
London, from the solitude of Craigenputtoch 
was, externally, a great one. In reality, 
however, it was less than it seemed. A 
man in the prime of life, when he came to 
reside in the metropolis, he brought into its 
roar and confusion, not the restless spirit of a 
young adventurer, but the settled energy 
of one who had ascertained his strength, and 
fixed his methods and his aims. 

Among the Maginns and others who con- 
tributed to " Frazer," he at once took his 
place as a man rather to influence than be in- 
fluenced ; and gradually, as the circle of his 
acquaintances widened so as to include such 
notable men as John Mill, Sterling, Maurice, 
Leigh Hunt, Browning, Thackeray, and 
others of established or rising fame in all 
walks of speculation and literature, the 
recognition of his rare personal powers of 



EditoT^s Preface. 21 



influence became more general and deep. 
In particular, in that London circle, in 
which John Sterling moved, was his per- 
sonal influence great, even while as yet he 
was but the anonymous author of the " Sar- 
tor Resartus" papers, and of numerous other 
contributions, also anonymous, to " Frazer's 
Magazine," and the " Edinburgh," " Foreign 
Quarterly," "British and Foreign," and 
" Westminster," Reviews. It was not till 

1837, or his forty-second year, that his 
name, already so well known to an inner 
circle of admirers, was openly associated 
with a work fully proportional to his pow- 
ers. This was his " French Revolution : a 
History," in three volumes, the extraordina- 
ry merits of which as at once a history and 
a gorgeous prose-epic, are known to all. In 

1838, the "Sartor Resartus" papers, already 
re-published in the United States, w^ere put 
forth, collectively, with his name ; and, in 
the same year, his various scattered articles 
in periodicals, after having similarly receiv- 
ed the honor of re-publication in America, 



22 Editor^ s Preface. 

were given to the world in four volumes, in 
their chronological series from 1827 to 
1837, under the title of " Miscellanies." 
Mr. Carlyle's next publication was his little 
tract on " Chartism," published in 1839, in 
which, to use the words of one of his critics, 
" he first broke ground on the Condition of 
England question." 

During the time when these successive 
publications were carrying his name through 
the land, Mr. Carlyle appeared in a new 
capacity, and delivered four courses of lec- 
tures in London to select but crowded au- 
diences, including many of the aristocracy 
both of rank and of literature : the first, a 
course on " German Literature," delivered at 
Willis's Rooms in 1837; the second, a 
course on " The History of Literature, or the 
Successive Periods of European Culture," 
delivered in Edward-street, Portman-square, 
in 1838 ; the third, a course on "the Revo- 
lutions of Modern Europe," delivered in 
1839 ; and the fourth, a course on " Heroes, 
Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History," 



Editor's Preface. 23 

delivered in 1840. This last course alone 
was published ; and it became more imme- 
diately popular than any of the works which 
had preceded it. It was followed, in 1843, 
by " Past and Present," a work contrasting, 
in a historico-philosophical spirit, English 
society of the middle ages with English 
society in our own day ; and this again, in 
1845, by " Oliver Cromwell's Letters and 
Speeches, with elucidations and a connecting 
narrative;" such being the unpretending 
form which a work, originally intended to 
be a history of Cromwell and his times, ul- 
timately assumed. By the year 1849, this 
work had reached a third edition. In 1850, 
appeared the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," in 
which, more than in any previous publica- 
tion, the author spoke out in the character of 
a social ' and political censor of his own age. 
From their very nature, as stern denuncia- 
tions of what the author considered contem- 
porary fallacies, wrongs, and hypocrisies, 
these pamphlets produced a storm of critical 
indignation against Mr. Carlyle, which was 



24 Editor'' s Preface. 

still raging, when, in 1 851 , he gave to the world 
his " Life of John Sterling." While we 
write (April, 1856) this, with the exception 
of some papers in periodicals, is the last 
publication that has proceeded from his pen ; 
but at the present the British public are 
anxiously expecting a " History of the Life 
and Times of Frederick the Great," in which 
he is known to have been long engaged. 
A collection of some of the most striking 
opinions, sentiments, and descri]3tions, con- 
tained in all his works hitherto written, has 
been published in a single volume, entitled, 
" Passages selected from the Writings of 
Thomas Carlyle," (1855,) from the memoir 
prefixed to which, by the editor, Mr. Thomas 
Ballantyne, we have derived most of the 
facts for this notice. 

An appreciation of Mr. Carlyle's genius 
and of his influence on British thought and 
literature, is not to be looked for here, and 
indeed is hardly possible in the still raging- 
conflict of opinions — one might even say, 
passions and parties — respecting him. The 



Editor's Preface. 25 

following remarks, however, by one of his 
critics, seems to us to express what all must 
admit to be the literal truth : — " It is nearly 
half a generation since Mr. Carlyle became 
an intellectual power in this country; and 
certainly rarely, if ever, in the history of 
literature, has such a phenomenon been wit- 
nessed as that of his influence. Throughout 
the whole atmosphere of this island his spirit 
has diflused itself, so that there is, probably, 
not an educated man under forty years of 
age, from Caithness to Cornwall, that can 
honestly say that he has not been more or 
less affected by it. Not to speak of his 
express imitators, one can hardly take up a 
book or a periodical, without finding some 
expression or some mode of thinking that 
bears the mint-mark of his genius," The 
same critic notices it as a peculiarity in Mr. 
Carlyle's literary career, that, whereas most 
men begin with the vehement and the con- 
troversial, and gradually become calm and 
acquiescent in things as they are, he began 
as an artist in pure literature, a critic of 



26 Editor's Preface. 

poetry, song, and the drama, and has ended 
as a vehement moralist and preacher of 
social reforms, disdaining the etiquette and 
even the name of pure literature, and more 
anxious to rouse than to please. With this 
development of his views of his own func- 
tions as a writer, is connected the develop- 
ment of his literary style, from the quiet 
and pleasing, though still solid and deep 
beauty of his earlier writings, to that later 
and more peculiar, and to many, disagree- 
able form, which has been nicknamed 'the 
Carlylese.' " 

As all the world knows, two volumes of 
Carlyle's Frederick the Great have recently 
appeared. We might add, from personal 
acquaintance, many anecdotes, but we have 
learned, during a long residence abroad, to 
respect the hospitality that we have enjoyed. 
O. W. Wight. 

January^ 1859. 



LIFE OF BURNS, 



PART FIRST. 

Robert Burns, the national bard of 
Scotland, was born on the 25th of Jan- 
uary, 1759, in a claj-built cottage about 
two miles south of the town of Ayr. He 
was the eldest son of William Burnes, or 
Burness, who, at the period of Robert's 
birth, was gardener and overseer to a 
gentleman of small estate ; but resided 
on a few acres of land which he had on 
lease from another person. The father 
was a man of strict religious principles, 
and also distinguished for that penetra- 
tion and knowledge of mankind which 



28 Life of Burns, 

was afterwards so conspicuous in his 
son. The mother of the poet was like- 
wise a very sagacious woman, and pos- 
sessed an inexhaustible store of ballads 
and legendary tales, with which she 
nourished the infant imagination of him 
whose own productions were destined 
to excel them all. 

These worthy individuals labored dili- 
gently for the support of an increasing 
family ; nor, in the midst of harassing 
struggles did they neglect the mental im- 
provement of their offspring ; a charac- 
teristic' of Scottish parents, even under the 
most depressing circumstances. In his 
sixth year, Robert was put under the tui- 
tion of one Campbell, and subsequently 
under Mr. John Murdoch, a very faith- 
ful and pains-taking teacher. With this 
individual he remained for a few years, 
and was accurately instructed in the 
first principles of composition. The poet 
and his brother Gilbert were the aptest 



Life of Burns 



29 



pupils in the school, and were generally 
at the head of the class. Mr. Murdoch, 
in afterwards recording the impressions 
which the two brothers made on him, 
says : " Gilbert always appeared to me 
to possess a more lively imagination, 
and to be more of the wit, than Eobert. 
I attempted to teach them a little church 
music. Here they were left far behind 
by all the rest of the school. Eobert's 
ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, 
and his voice nntunable. It was long 
before I could get them to distinguish 
one tune from another. Eobert's coun- 
tenance was generally grave, and ex- 
pressive ^of a serious, contemplative, and 
thoughtful mind. Gilbert's face said, 
Mirth, with thee I mean to live ; and 
certainly, if any person who knew the 
two boys had been asked which of them 
was the most likely to court the muses, 
he would never have guessed that Bolert 
had a propensity of that kind." 



30 Life of Burns. 

Besides the tuition of Mr. Murclocli, 
Burns received instructions from his 
father in writing and arithmetic. Under 
their joint care, he made rapid progress, 
and was remarkable for the ease with 
which he committed devotional poetry 
to memory. The following extract from 
liis letter to Dr. Moore, in 1Y87, is inter- 
esting, from the light which it throws 
upon his progress as a scholar, and on 
the formation of his character as a poet : 
— " At those years," says he, " I was by 
no means a favorite with anybody.^ I 
was a good deal noted for a retentive 
memory, a stubborn, sturdy something 
in my disposition, and an enthusiastic 
idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I 
was then but a child. Though it cost 
the schoolmaster some thrashings, I 
made an excellent scholar ; and by the 
time I was ten or eleven years of age, I 
was a critic in substantives, verbs, and 
particles. In my infant and boyish 



Life of B terns. 31 

days, too, I owed much to an old woman 
who resided in the family, remarkable 
for her ignorance, credulity, and super- 
stition. She had, I suppose, the largest 
collection in the country, of tales and 
songs, concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, 
brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, 
kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, 
apparitions, cantrips, giants, enchanted 
towers, dragons, and other trumpery. 
This cultivated the latent seeds of poet- 
ry; but had so strong an effect upon 
my imagination, that to this hour, in my 
nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a 
sharp look-out in suspicious places ; and 
though nobody can be more skeptical 
than I am in such matters, yet it 
often takes an effort of philosophy to 
shake off these idle terrors. The earli- 
est composition that I recollect taking 
pleasure in, was. The Vision of Mirza, 
and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, 
^^IIoio are thy servants hlest^ LordP'' I 



32 Life of Burns. 

particularly remember one-half stanza, 
wliicli was music to my boyish ear. : 

*' For though on dreadful whirls we hung 
High on the broken wave." 

I met with these pieces in Mason^s Eng- 
lish Collection^ one of my school-books. 
The first two books I ever read in pri- 
vate, and which gave me more pleasure 
than any two books I ever read since, 
were. The Life of LLannihal^ and The 
Llistory of Sir William Wallace. \ Han- 
nibal gave my young ideas such a turn, 
that I used to strut in raptures up and 
down after the recruiting drum and 
bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough 
to be a soldier ; while the story of Wal- 
lace poured a tide of Scottish prejudice 
into my veins, which will boil along 
there till the flood-gates of life shut in 
eternal rest." 

Mr. Murdoch's removal from Mount 
Oliphant deprived Burns of his instruc- 



Life of Burns. 33 

tions ; but they were still continued by 
the father of the bard. About the age 
of fourteen, he was sent to school every 
alternate week for the improvement of 
his writing. In the mean while, he was 
busily employed upon the operations of 
the farm ; and, at the age of fifteen, was 
considered as the principal laborer upon 
it. About a year after this he gained 
three weeks of respite, which he spent 
with his old tutor, Murdoch, at Ayr, in 
revising the English grammar, and in 
studying the French language, in which 
he made uncommon progress. Ere his 
sixteenth year elapsed, he had consider- 
ably extended his reading. The vicinity 
of Mount Oliphant to Ayr afforded him 
facilities for gratifying what had now 
become a passion. Among the books 
which he had perused were some plays 
of Shakspeare, Pope, the works of Allan 
Ramsay, and a collection of songs, which 
constituted his vade mecum. " I pored 
8 



84 Life of Burns. 

over them," says he, " driving my cart 
or walking to labor, song by song, verse 
by verse, carefully noticing the true, 
tender or sublime, from affectation and 
fustian." So early did he evince his 
attachment to the lyric muse, in which 
he was destined to surpass all who have 
gone before or succeeded him. 

At this period the family removed to 
Lochl^a, in the parish of Tarbolton. 
Some time before, however, he had 
made his first attempt in poetry. It 
was a song addressed to a rural beauty, 
about his own age, and though possess- 
ing no great merit as a whole, it con- 
tains some lines and ideas wdiich would 
have done honor to him at any age. 
After the removal to Lochlea, his lit- 
erary zeal slackened, for he was thuh 
cut off from those aquaintances whose 
conversation stimulated his powers, and 
whose kindness supplied him with books. 
For about three years after this period, 



Life of Burns. 35 

lie was busily employed upon the farm, 
but at intervals he paid his addresses to 
the poetic muse, and with no common 
success. The summer of his nineteenth 
year was spent in the study of mensura- 
tion, surveying, etc., at a small sea-port 
town, a good distance from home. He 
returned to his father's considerably im- 
proved. " My reading," says he, " was 
enlarged with the very important addi- 
tion of Thomson's and Shenstone's works. 
I had seen human nature in a new pha- 
sis ; and I engaged several of my school- 
fellows to keep up a literary correspon- 
dence with me. This improved me in 
composition. I had met with a collec- 
tion of letters by the wits of Qaeen 
Anne's reign, and I pored over them 
most devoutly ; I kept copies of any of 
my own letters that pleased me, and a 
comparison between them and the com- 
position of most of my correspondents 
flattered my vanity. I carried this whim 



36 Life of Burns. 

so far, that though I had not three far- 
things' worth of business in the world, 
yet almost every post brought me as 
many letters as if I had been a broad, 
plodding son of day-book and ledger/' 

His mind, peculiarly susceptible of 
tender impressions, was continually the 
slave of some rustic charmer. In the 
"heat and whirlwind of his love," he 
generally found relief in poetry, by 
which, as by a safety-valve, his turbu- 
lent passions were allowed to have vent. 
He formed the resolution of entering 
the matrimonial state ; but his circum- 
scribed means of subsistence as a far- 
mer preventing his taking that step, he 
resolved on becoming a flax-dresser, for 
which purpose he removed to the town 
of Irvine, in 1781. The speculation 
turned out unsuccessful; for the shop, 
catching fire, was burnt, and the poet 
returned to his father without a six- 
pence. During his stay at Irvine he 



Life of Btbrns. 87 

had met with Ferguson's poems. This 
circumstance was of some importance to 
Burns, for it roused his poetic powers 
from the torpor into which they had 
fallen, and in a great measure finally 
determined the Scottish character of his 
poetr}'. He here also contracted some 
friendships, which he himself says did 
him mischief; and, by his brother Gil- 
bert's account, from this date there was 
a serious change in his conduct. The 
venerable and excellent parent of the 
poet died soon after his son's return. 
The support of the family now devolv- 
ing upon Burns, in conjunction with his 
brother he took a sub-lease of the farm 
of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline. 
The four years which he resided upon 
this farm were the most important of 
his life. It was here he felt that nature 
had designed him for a poet ; and here, 
accordingly, his genius began to develop 
its energies in those strains which will 



V 

Life of Bv/rns. 



make his name familiar to all future 
times, the admiration of every civilized 
country, and the glory and boast of his 
own. 

The vigor of Burns^s understanding, 
and the keenness of his wit, as displayed 
more particularly at masonic meetings 
and debating clubs, of which he formed 
one at Mauchline, began to spread his 
fame as a man of uncommon endow- 
ments. He now could number as his 
acquaintance several clergymen, and 
also some gentlemen of substance ; 
amongst whom was Mr. Gavin Ham- 
ilton, wTiter in Mauchline, one of his 
earliest patrons. One circumstance 
more than any other contributed to 
increase his notoriety. "Polemical 
divinity," says he to Dr. Moore in 
1787, " about this time w^as 23utting 
the country half mad ; and I, ambitious 
of shining, in conversation-parties on 
Sundays, at funerals, etc., used to puz- 



Life of Burns, 39 

zle Calvinism with so much heat and 
indiscretion, that I raised a hue-and-cry 
of heresy against me, which has not 
ceased to this hour." The farm which 
he possessed belonged to the Earl of 
Loudon, but the brothers held it in sub- 
lease from Mr. Hamilton. This gentle- 
man was at open feud with one of the 
ministers of Mauchline, who was a rigid 
Calvinist. Mr. Hamilton maintained 
opposite tenets ; and it is not matter of 
surprise that the young farmer should 
have espoused his cause, and brought 
all the resources of his genius to bear 
upon it. The result was The Holy Fair^ 
The Ordination^ Holy Willie's Prayer^ 
and other satires, as much distinguished 
for their coarse severity and bitterness, 
as for their genius. 

The applause which greeted these 
pieces emboldened the poet, and en- 
couraged him to proceed. In his life, 
by his brother Gilbert, a very interest- 



40 Life of Burns. 

ing account is given of the occasions 
which gave rise to the poems, and the 
chronological order in which they were 
produced. The exquisite pathos and 
humor, the strong manly sense, the 
masterly command of felicitous lan- 
guage, the graphic power of delineat- 
ing scenery, manners, and incidents, 
which appear so conspicuously in his 
various poems, could not fail to call 
forth the admiration of those who were 
favored with a perusal of them. But 
the clouds of misfortune were gathering 
darkly above the head of him who was 
thus giving delight to a large and widen- 
ing circle of friends. The farm of Moss- 
giel proved a losing concern ; and an 
amour with Miss Jane Armour, after- 
wards Mrs. Burns, had assumed so seri- 
ous an aspect, that he at first resolved 
to fly from the scene of his disgrace and 
misery. One trait of his character, how- 
ever, must be mentioned. Before taking 



Life of Burns. 41 

any steps for liis departure, lie met Miss 
Armour by appointment, and gave into 
her hands a written acknowledgment 
of marriage, which, when produced by 
a person in her situation, is, according 
to the Scots' law, to be accepted as legal 
evidence of an irregular marriage hav- 
ing really taken place. This the lady 
burned, at the persuasion of her father, 
who was adverse to a marriage; and 
Burns, thus wounded in the two most 
powerful feelings of his mind, his love 
and pride, was driven almost to insanity. 
Jamaica was his destination ; but as he 
did not possess the money necessary to 
defray the expense of his passage out, 
he resolved to publish some of his best 
poems, in order to raise the requisite 
sum. These views were w^armly pro- 
moted by some of his more opulent 
friends ; and a sufficiency of subscribers 
having been procured, one of the finest 
volumes of poetry that ever appeared in 



42 Life of Burns. 

the world issued from the provincial 
press of Kilmarnock. 

It is hardly possible to imagine with 
what eager admiration and delight thej 
were every where received. They pos- 
sessed in an eminent deo^ree all those 
qualities which invariably contribute to 
render any literary work quickl}^ and 
permanently popular. They were writ- 
ten in a phraseology of which all the 
powers were universally felt, and which 
being at once antique, familiar, and now 
rarely written, was therefore fitted to 
serve all the dignified and picturesque 
uses of poetry, without making it unin- 
telligible. The imagery and the senti- 
ments were at once natural, impressive, 
and interesting. Those topics of satire 
and scandal in which the rustic delights; 
that humorous imitation of cliaracter, 
and that witty association of ideas, famil- 
iar and striking, yet not naturally allied 
to one another, which has force to shake 



Life of Burns. 43 

his sides with laughter ; those fancies of 
superstition, at which one still wonders 
and trembles ; those affecting sentiments 
and images of true religion, which are 
at once dear and awful to the heart ; 
were all represented by Burns with the 
magical power of true poetry. Old and 
young, high and low, grave and gay, 
learned and ignorant, all were alike sur- 
prised and transported. 

In the mean time, a few copies of 
these fascinating poems found tlieir way 
to Edinburgh, and having been read to 
Dr. Blacklock, obtained his warmest 
approbation ; and he advised the author 
to repair to Edinburgh. Burns lost no 
time in complying with this request; 
and accordingly, towards the end of the 
year 1786, he set out for the capitol, 
where he was received by Dr. Black- 
lock with the most flattering kindness, 
and introduced to every person of taste 
among that excellent man's friends. 



44: Life of Burns. 

Multitudes now vied with each other 
in patronizing the rustic poet. Those 
who possessed at once true taste and 
ardent jDhilanthropy were soon united 
in his praise ; those who were disposed 
to favor any good thing belonging to 
Scotland, purely because it was Scottish, 
gladly joined the cry ; while those who 
had hearts and understandings to be 
charmed without knowing why, when 
they saw their native customs, manners, 
and language, made the subjects and 
the materials of poesy, could not sup- 
press that impulse of feeling which 
struo-ffled to declare itself in favor of 
Burns. 

Thus did Burns, ere he had been 
many weeks in Edinburgh, find him- 
self the object of universal curiosity, 
favor, admiration, and fondness. Pie 
was sought after, courted with atten- 
tions the most respectful and assiduous, 
feasted, flattered, caressed, and treated 



Life of Burns. 45 

bj all ranks as the great boast of his 
country, whom it was scarcely possible 
to honor and reward in a degree equal 
to his merits. 

A new edition of his poems was called 
for; and the public mind was directed 
to the subject by Henry Mackenzie, who 
dedicated a paper in the Lounger to a 
commendatory notice of the poet. This 
circumstance will ever be remembered 
to the honor of that polished writer, not 
only for the warmth of the eulogy he 
bestowed, but because it was the first 
printed acknowledgment which had 
been made to the genius of Burns. 
The copyright was sold to Creech for 
<£100 ; but the friends of the poet ad- 
vised him to forward a subscription. The 
patronage of the Caledonian Hunt, a 
very influential body, was obtained. 
The list of subscribers rapidly rose to 
1500, many gentlemen paying a great 
deal more than the price of the volume ; 



46 Life of Burns. 

and it was supposed that the poet de- 
rived from the subscription and the sale 
of his copyright a clear profit of at least 
£700. 

The conversation of Burns, according 
to the testimony of all the eminent men 
who heard him, was even more wonder- 
ful than his poetry. He affected no soft 
air nor graceful motions of politeness, 
which might have ill accorded with the 
rustic plainness of his native manners. 
Conscious superiority of mind taught 
him to associate with the great, the 
learned, and the gay, without being 
overawed into any such bashfulness as 
mio^ht have rendered him confused in 
thought, or hesitating in elocution. He 
possessed withal an extraordinary share 
of plain common sense, or mother-wit, 
which prevented him from obtruding 
upon persons, of whatever rank, with 
whom he was admitted to converse, any 
of those effusions of vanity, envy, or 



-^i^<^ of Burns. 47 



self-conceit, in which authors who have 
lived remote from the general practice 
of life, and whose minds have been 
almost exclusively confined to contem- 
plate their own studies and their own 
works, are but too prone to indulge. 
In conversation, he displayed a sort of 
intuitive quickness and rectitude of 
judgment, upon every subject that 
arose. The sensibility of his heart, and 
the vivacity of his fancy, gave a rich 
coloring to whatever opinions he was 
disposed to advance; and his language 
was thus not less haj^py in conversation 
than in his writings. Hence those who 
had met and conversed ^dth him once, 
were pleased to meet and to converse 
with liim again and again. 

For some time he associated only with 
the virtuous, the learned, and the wise, 
and the purity Of his morals remained 
uncontaminated. But unfortunately he 
fell, as others have fallen in similar cir- 



48 Life of Bums. 

cumstances. He suffered himself to be 
surrounded by persons wlio were proud 
to tell that they had been in company 
with Burns, and had seen Burns as loose 
and as foolish as themselves. He now 
also began to contract something of 
arrogance in conversation. Accustomed 
to be among his associates what is vul- 
garly but expressively called " the cock 
of the company," he could scarcely re- 
frain from indulging in a similar free- 
dom and dictatorial decision of talk, 
even in the presence of persons who 
could less patiently endure presumption. 
After remaining some months in the 
Scottish metropolis, basking in the noon- 
tide sun of a popularity which, as Dugald 
Stewart well remarks, would have turned 
any head but his own, he formed a reso- 
lution of returning to the shades whence 
he had emerged, but not before he had 
perambulated the southern border. On 
the eth of May, 1Y87, he set out on his 



Life of Burns. 49 

journey, and, visiting all that appeared 
interesting on the north of the Tweed, 
proceeded to I^ewcastle and other places 
on the English side. He returned in 
about two months to his family at 
Mauchline ; but in a short period he 
again set out on an excursion to the 
north, where he was most flatteringly 
received by all the great families. On 
his return to Mossgiel he completed his 
marriage with Miss Armour. He then 
concluded a bargain with Mr. Miller of 
Dalswinton, for a lease of the farm of 
Elliesland, on advantageous terms. 

Burns entered on possession of this 
farm at Whit-Sunday, 1788. He had 
formerly applied with success for an ex- 
cise commission, and during six weeks 
of this year, he had to attend to the 
business of that profession at Ayr. His 
life for some time was thus wandering 
and unsettled ; and Dr. Currie mentions 
this as one of his chief misfortunes. 
4 



50 Life of Burns. 

Mrs. Burns came home to him towards 
the end of the year, and the poet was 
accustomed to say that the happiest 
period of his life was the first winter 
spent in Elliesland. The neighboring 
farmers and gentlemen, pleased to ob- 
tain for a neighbor the poet by wdiose 
works they had been delighted, kindly 
sought his company, and invited him to 
their houses. Burns, however, found 
an inexpressible charm in sitting down 
beside his wife, at his own fireside ; in 
wandering over his own grounds; in 
once more putting his hand to the spade 
and the plough ; in farming his enclo- 
sures, and managing his cattle. For 
some months he felt almost all that 
felicity which fancy had taught liim to 
expect in his new situation. He had 
been for a time idle ; but his muscles 
were not yet unbraced for rural toil. 
He now seemed to find a joy in being 
the husband of the mistress of his affec- 



^'^■f^ of Burns. 51 

tions, and in seeing himself the father 
of children such as promised to attach 
him for ever to that modest, humble, 
and domestic life, in which alone he 
could hope to be permanently happy. 
Even his engagements in the service of 
excise did not, at first, threaten either 
to contaminate the poet or to ruin the 
farmer. 

From various causes, the farming 
speculation did not succeed. Indeed, 
from the time he obtained a situation 
under government, he gradually began 
to sink the farmer in the exciseman. 
Occasionally he assisted in the rustic 
occupations of Elliesland, but for the 
most part he was engaged in very dif- 
ferent pursuits. In his professional per- 
ambulations over the moors of Dum- 
fries-shire he had to encounter tempta- 
tions which a mind and temperament 
like his found it difficult to resist. His 
immortal w^orks had made him univer- 



52 Life of Burns. 

sally known and entliusiasticallj ad- 
mired ; and accordingly lie was a wel- 
come guest at every house, from the 
most princely mansion to the lowest 
coTteitry inn. In the latter he was too 
frequently to be found as the presiding 
genius, and master of the orgies. How- 
ever, he still continued at intervals to 
cultivate the muse ; and, besides a vari- 
ety of other pieces, he produced at this 
period the inimitable poem of Tam 
O'Shanter. Johnson's Miscellany was 
ulso indebted to him for the finest of its 
lyrics. One pleasing trait of his char- 
acter must not be overlooked. He su- 
perintended the formation of a subscrip- 
tion library in the parish, and took the 
v^hole management of it upon himself. 
These institutions, though common now, 
were not so short at the period of which 
we write ; and it should never be forgot- 
ten that Burns was amongst the first, if 



Life of Burns. 53 

not tlie very first, of their founders in the 
rural districts of southern Scotland. 

Towards the close of 1791 he finally 
abandoned his farm ; and obtaining an 
appointment to the Dumfries division 
of excise, he repaired to that toAvn on a 
salary of £70 per annum. All his prin- 
cipal biographers concur in stating that 
after settling in Dumfries his moral 
career was downwards. Heron, who 
had some accpaintance with the matter, 
says, '' His dissipation became still more 
dee2:)ly habitual ; he was here more ex- 
posed than in the country to be solicited 
to share the revels of the dissolute and 
the idle ; foolish young men flocked 
eagerly about him, and from time to 
time pressed him to drink with them, 
that they might enjoy his wit. The Cal- 
edonia Club, too, and the Dumfries-shire 
and Galloway Hunt, had occasional 
meetings in Dumfries after Burns went 
to reside there : and the poet was of 



54: Life of Burns. 

course invited to share their convivial- 
ity, and hesitated not to accept the invi- 
tation. In the intervals between his 
different fits of intemperance, he suffered 
the keenest anguish of remorse, and 
horribly afflictive foresight. His Jane 
behaved with a degree of conjugal and 
maternal tenderness and prudence, which 
made him feel more bitterly the evil of 
his misconduct, although they could not 
reclaim him." 

This is a dark picture — perhaps too 
dark. The Eev. Mr. Gray, who, as the 
teacher of his son, was intimately ac- 
quainted with Burns, and had frequent 
opportunities of judging of his general 
character and deportment, gives a more 
amiable portrait of the bard. Being an 
eye-witness, the testimony of this gen- 
tleman must be allowed to have some 
weight. "The truth is," says lie, " Burns 
was seldom intoxicated. The drunkard 
soon becomes besotted, and is shunned 



Life of Burns. 55 

even by the convivial. Had he been 
so, he could not have long continued 
the idol of eveiy party." This is strong 
reasoning; and he goes on to mention 
other circumstances which seem to con- 
firm the truth of his position. In bal- 
ancing these two statements, a juster 
estimate of the moral deportment of 
Burns may be formed. 

In the year 1Y92 party politics ran to 
a great heiglit in Scotland, and the 
liberal and independent spirit of Burns 
did certainly betray him into some in- 
discretions. A general opinion prevails, 
that he so far lost the good graces of his 
superiors by his conduct, as to consider 
all prospects of future promotion as 
hopeless. But this appears not to have 
been the case ; and the fact that he acted 
as supervisor before his death is a strong- 
proof to the contrary. Of his political 
verses, few have as yet been published. 
But in these he warmly espoused the 



56 Life of Burns, 

cause of the Whigs, which kept up the 
spleen of the other party, ah*eady suffi- 
ciently provoked ; and this may in some 
measure account for the bitterness with 
which his own character was attacked. 
Whatever opinion may be formed of 
the extent of his dissipation in Dumfries, 
one fact is unquestionable, that his pow- 
ers remained unimpaired to the last ; it 
was there he produced his finest lyrics, 
and they are the finest, as well as the 
purest, that ever delighted mankind. 
Besides Johnson's Museum^ in which 
he took an interest to the last, and to 
which he contributed most ^extensively, 
he formed a connection with Mr. George 
Thomson, of Edinburgh. This gentleman 
had conceived the laudable design of 
collecting the national melodies of Scot- 
land, with accompaniments by the most 
eminent composers, and poetry by the 
best writers, in addition to those words 
which were originally attached to them. 



Life of Bior7is. 57 

From the multitude of songs which 
Burns wrote, from the year 1792 till 
the commencement of his illness, it is 
evident that few days could have passed 
without his producing some stanzas for 
the work. The following passage from 
his correspondence, which was also most 
extensive, proves that his songs were not 
hurriedly got up, but composed with the 
utmost care and attention. " Until I am 
complete master of a tune in my own. 
singing, such as it is," says he, "I can 
never compose for it. My way is this : 
I consider the poetic sentiment cor- 
respondent to my idea of the musical 
expression — then choose my theme — 
compose one stanza. When that is 
composed, which is generally the most 
difficult part of the business, I w^alk out 
— sit down now and then — look out for 
objects in nature round me that are in 
unison or harmony with the cogitations 
of my fancy, and workings of my bosom 



58 Life of Biorns. 

— humming every now and then the air, 
with the verses I have framed. When 
I feel my muse beginning to jade, I 
retire to the solitary fireside of my 
study, and there commit my effusions 
to paper; swinging at intervals on the 
hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of 
calling forth my own critical strictures, 
as my pen goes. Seriously, this, at 
home, is almost invariably my Avay." 
This is not only interesting for the light 
which it throws upon his method of 
composition, but it proves that convivi- 
ality had not as yet greater charms for 
him than the muse. 

From his youth Burns had exhibited 
ominous symptoms of a radical disorder 
in his constitution. A palpitation of the 
heart, and a derangement of the diges- 
tive organs, were conspicuous. These 
were, doubtless, increased by his indul- 
gences, which became more frequent as 
he drew towards the close of his career. 



Life of Bitrns. 59 

In the autumn of 1795 he lost an only 
daughter, which was a severe blow to 
him. Soon afterwards he was seized 
with a rheumatic fever ; and " long the 
die spun doubtful," sajs he, in a letter 
to his faithfnl friend Mrs. Dunlap, '' un- 
til, after many wrecks of a sick bed, it 
seems to have turned up life, and I am 
beghming to crawl across my room." 
The cloud behind which his sun was 
destined to be eclipsed at noon had be- 
gun to darken above him. Before he 
had completely recovered, he had the 
imprudence to join a festive circle ; 
and, on his return from it, he caught a 
cold, which brought back his trouble 
upon liim with redoubled severity. Sea- 
bathing was had recourse to, but with 
no ultimate success. He lingered until 
the 21st of July, 1796, when he expired. 
The interest which the death of Burns 
excited was intense. All differences 
were forgotten; his genius only was 



60 Life of B 



urns. 



thought of. On the 26tli of the same 
month he was conveyed to the grave, 
followed by about ten thousand individ- 
uals of all ranks, many of whom had 
come from distant parts of the country 
to witness the solemnity. He was in- 
terred with military honors by the Dum- 
fries volunteers, to which body he had 
belonged. 

Thus, at the age of thirty-seven, an age 
when the mental powers of man have 
scarcely reached their climax, died 
Kobert Burns, one of the greatest poets 
whom his country has produced. It is 
unnecessary to enter into any lengthened 
analysis of his poetry or character. Ilis 
works are universally known and ad- 
mired, and criticism has been drawn to 
the dregs upon the subject; and that, 
too, by the gi;eatest masters who have 
appeared since his death, — no mean test 
of the great merits of his writings. He 
excels equally in touching the heart by 



• Life oj Burns. 61 

the exquisiteness of his pathos, and ex- 
citing the risible faculties by the breadth 
of his humor. His lyre had many strings, 
and he had equal command over them 
all; striking each, and frequently in 
chords, with the skill and power of a 
master. That his satire sometimes de- 
generates into coarse invective, can not 
be denied ; but where personality is not 
permitted to interfere, his poems of this 
description may take their place beside 
any thing of the kind w^hich has ever 
been produced, without being disgraced 
by the comparison. It is unnecessary 
to re-echo the praises of his best pieces, 
as there is no epithet of admiration 
which has not been bestowed upon them. 
Those who had best opportunities of 
judging, are of opinion that his works, 
stamped as they are with the impress of 
sovereign genius, fall short of the pow- 
ers he possessed. It is therefore to be 
lamented that he undertook no great 



62 Life of Btirns. 

work 'of fiction or invention. Had circum- 
stances permitted, he would probably 
have done so ; but his excise duties, and 
without doubt his own follies, prevent- 
ed him. His passions were strong, and 
his capacity of enjoyment corresponded 
with them. These continually precipi- 
tated him into the variety of pleasure, 
where alone they could be gratified ; 
and the reaction consequent upon such 
indulgences (for he possessed the finest 
discrimination between right and Avrong) 
threw him into low S2:)irits, to wliicli lie 
was also constitutionally liable. His 
mind, being thus never for any length 
of time in an equable tone, could scarcely 
pursue with steady regularity a work of 
an}'- length. His moral aberrations, as 
detailed by some of his biographers, 
have been exaggerated, as already 
noticed. This has been proved by the 
testimony of many witnesses, from whose 
authority there can be no appeal; for 



Life of Burns, 63 

they bad the best opportunities of jiidg- 
ing. In fine, it may be doubted whether 
he has not, by his writings, exercised a 
greater power over the minds of men, 
and the general system of life, than has 
been exercised by any other modern 
poet. A complete edition of his works, 
in four vols. 8vo., with a life, was pub- 
lished by Dr. Currie of Liverpool, for 
the benefit of his family, to whom it re- 
alized a handsome sum. Editions have 
been since multiplied beyond number ; 
and several excellent biographies of the 
23oet have been published, particularly 
that by Mr. Lockhart. 



LIFE OF BURNS.* 



PART SECOND. 

In the modern arrangements of soci- 
ety, it is no uncommon thing that a man 
of genius must, like Butler, "ask for 
bread and receive a stone ;" for, in spite 
of our grand maxim of supply and de- 
mand, it is by no means the highest ex- 
cellence that men are most forward to 
recognize. The inventor of a spinning- 
jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his 
own day ; but the writer of a true poem, 
like the apostle of a true religion, is 

* A review of the Life of Robert Burns. By J. G. Lock- 
hart, LL. B. Edinburgh, 1828. 



Ziife of Burns. 65 

nearly as sure of tlie contrary. We do 
not know whether it is not an aggrava- 
tion of the injustice, that there is gener- 
ally a posthumous retribution. Kobert 
Burns, in the course of nature, might yet 
have been living ; but his short life was 
spent in toil and penury ; and he died, 
in the prime of his manhood, miserable 
and neglected ; and yet already a brave 
mausoleum shines over his dust, and 
more than one splendid monument has 
been reared in other places to his fame : 
the street where he languished in poverty 
is called by his name ; the highest per- 
sonages in our literature have been proud 
to appear as his commentators and ad- 
mirers, and here is the sixth narrative of 
his Life^ that has been given to the 
world ! 

Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to 
apologize for this new attempt on such 
a subject: but his readers, we believe, 
will readily acquit him ; or, at worst. 



Q6 Life of Burns. 

will censure only the performance of his 
task, not the choice of it. The character 
of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot 
easily become either trite or exhausted ; 
and will probably gain rather than lose in 
its dimensions by the distance to which it 
is removed by Time. ]^o man, it has 
been said, is a hero to his valet : and this 
is probably true ; but the fault is at least 
as likely to be the valet's as the hero's : 
For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye 
few things are wonderful that are not 
distant. It is difficult for men to believe 
that the man, the mere man whom they 
see, nay, perhaps, painfully feel, toiling 
at their side through the poor jostlings 
of existence, can be made of finer clay 
than themselves. Suppose that some 
dining acqaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's, 
and neighbour of John a Combe's, had 
snatched an hour or two from the pre- 
servation of his game, and written us a 
Life of Shakspeare ! What dissertations 



Life of Burns. 67 

should we not have had, — ^not on Hamlet 
and The Tempest^ but on the wool-trade 
and deer-stealing, and the libel and va- 
grant laws! and how the Poacher be- 
came a Player ; and how Sir Thomas 
and Mr. John had Christian bowels, and 
did not push him to extremities ! In 
like manner, we believe, with respect to 
Burns, that till the companions of his 
pilgrimage, the honourable Excise Com- 
missioners, and the Gentlemen of the 
Caledonian Hunt, and the Dumfries 
Aristrocracj, and all the Squires and 
Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers, 
and the New and Old Light Clergy, 
whom he had to do with, shall have be- 
come invisible in the darkness of the 
Past, or visible only by light borrowed 
from Ms juxtaposition, it will be difficult 
to measure him by any true standard, or 
to estimate what he really was and did, 
in the eighteenth century, for his country 
and the world. It will be difficult, we 



68 Life of Burns. 

say ; but still a fare problem for literary 
historians ; and repeated attempts will 
give us repeated approximations. 

His former biographers have done 
something, no doubt, but by no means 
a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie 
and Mr. "Walker, the principal of these 
writers, have both, we think, mistaken 
one essentially important thing : — Their 
own and the woi'ld's true relation to 
their author, and the style in which it 
became such men to think and to speak 
of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the 
poet truly ; more perhaps than he avow- 
ed to his readers, or even to himself; 
yet he everywhere introduces him with 
a certain patronizing, apologetic air ; as 
if the polite public might think it strange 
and half unwarrantable that he, a man 
of science, a scholar, and gentleman, 
should do such honour to a rustic. In 
all this, however, we r-eadily admit that 
his fault was not want of love, but weak- 



Life of Burn. 



ness of faith; and regret that the first 
and kindest of all onr poet's biographers 
should not have seen farther, or believed 
more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker 
offends more deeply in the same kind : 
and both err alike in presenting us with 
a detached catalogue of his several sup- 
posed attributes, virtues, and vices, in- 
stead of a delineation of the resulting 
character as a living unity. This, how- 
ever, IS not painting a portrait ; but 
gauging the length and breadth of the 
several features, and jotting down their 
dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay, 
it is not so much as this : for we are yet 
to learn by what arts or instruments the 
mind could be so measured and gauged. 
Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, 
has avoided both these errors. He uni- 
formly treats Burns as the high and re- 
markable man the public voice has now 
pronounced him to be : and in delineat- 
ing him, he has avoided the method of 



70 Life of Burns. 

separate generalities, and rather songlit 
for characteristic incidents, habits, ac- 
tions, sayings ; in a word, for aspects 
which exhibit the whole man, as he 
looked and lived among his fellows. 
The book accordingly, with all its de- 
ficiencies, gives more insight, w^e think, 
into the true character of Burns, than 
any prior biography ; though, being writ- 
ten on the very popular and condensed 
sclieme of an article for Constable's Mis- 
cellany^ it has less depth than we could 
have wished and expected from a writer 
of such power, and contains rather 
more, and more multifarious, quotations, 
than belong of right to an original pro- 
duction. Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own 
writing is generally so good, so clear, di- 
rect, and nervous, that we seldom wish 
to see it making place for another man's. 
However, the spirit of the work is 
throughout candid, tolerant, and anx- 
iously conciliating; compliments and 



Life of Burns. 71 

praises are liberally distributed, on all 
hands, to great and small ; and, as Mr. 
Morris Birkbeck observes of the society 
in the backwoods of America, "the 
courtesies of polite life are never lost 
sight of for a moment." But there are 
better things than these in the volume ; 
and we can safely testify, not only tliat 
it is easily and pleasantly read a first 
time, but may even be without difficulty 
read again. 

/ N'evertheless, we are far from thinking 
that the problem of Burns's Biography 
has yet been adequately solved. We 
do not allude so much to deficiency of 
facts or documents, — though of these we 
are still every day receiving some fresh 
accession, — as to the limited and imper- 
fect application of them to the great end 

- of Biography. Our notions upon this 
subject may perhaps appear extrava- 
gant ; but if an individual is really of 
consequence enough to have his life and 



72 Life of Burns. 

character recorded for public remem- 
brance, we have always been of opinion, 
that the public ought to be made ac- 
quainted with all the inward springs and 
relations of his character. How did the 
world and man's life, from his particular 
position, represent themselves to his 
mind ? How did coexisting circumstan- 
ces modify him from without % liow did 
he modify these from within? With 
what endeavors and what efficacy rule 
over them? with what resistance and 
what suffering sink under them? In 
one word, what and how produced was 
the effect of society on him? what and 
how produced was his effect on society ? 
He who shou'ld answer these questions, 
in regard to any individual, would, as 
we believe, furnish a model of perfection 
in biography. Few individuals, indeed, 
can deserve such a study ; and many 
lives will be written, and, for the grati- 
fication of innocent curiosity, ought to 



Life of Burns. 73 

be written, and read, and forgotten, 
which are not in this sense hiograpliies. 
But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of 
these few individuals ; and sucli a study, 
at least with such a result, he has not 
yet obtained. Our own contributions 
to it, we are aware, can be but scanty 
and feeble ; but we offer them with good- 
will, and trust they may meet with 
acceptance from those for whom they 
are intended. 

Burns first came upon the w^orld as a 
prodigy; and was, in that character, 
entertained by it, in the usual fashion, 
with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, 
speedily subsiding into censure and neg- 
lect; till his early and most mournful 
death again awakened an enthusiasm 
for him, which, especially as there was 
now nothing to be done, and much to 
be spoken, has prolonged itself even to 
our own time. It is true, the "nine 
days" have long since elapsed ; and the 



74 Life of Burns, 

very continuance of this clamor proves 
that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Ac- 
cordingly, even in sober judgments, 
where, as years passed by, he has come 
to rest more and more exclusively on his 
own intrinsic merits, and may now be 
well nigh shorn of that casual radiance, 
he appears not only as a true British 
poet, but as one of the most considerable 
British men of the eighteenth century. 
Let it not be objected that he did little ; 
he did much, if we consider where and 
how. If the work performed was small, 
we must remember that he had his very 
materials to discover ; for the metal he 
worked in lay hid under the desert, 
where no eye but his had guessed its 
existence ; and we may almost say, that 
with his own hand he had to construct 
the tools for fashioning it. For he found 
himself in deepest obscurity, without 
help, without instruction, without model ; 
or with models only of the meanest sort. 



Life of Burns. Y5 

An educated man stands, as it were, in 
the midst of a boundless arsenal and 
magazine, filled with -all the weapons 
and eno^ines which man's skill has been 
able to devise from the earliest time ; and 
he works, accordingly, with a strength 
borrowed from all past ages. How dif- 
ferent is Kis state who stands on the out- 
side of that storehouse, and feels that its 
gates must be stormed, or remain for 
ever shut against him ? His means are 
the commonest and rudest; the mere 
work done is no measure of his strength. 
A dw^arf behind his steam engine may 
remove mountains ; but no dwarf will 
hew them down with the pick-axe ; and 
he must be a Titan that hurls them 
abroad with his arms. 

It is in this last shape that Burns pre- 
sents himself. Born in an age the most 
prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a 
condition the most disadvantageous, 
where his mind, if it accomplished 



76 Life of Burns, 

aught, must accomplish it under the 
pressure of continual bodily toil, nay, 
of penury and desponding apprehension 
of the worst evils, and with no further- 
ance but such knowledge as dwells in a 
poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a 
Ferguson or Ramsay for his standard 
of beau.ty, he sinks not under all these 
impediments. Through the fogs and 
darkness of that obscure region, his 
eagle eye discerns the true relations of 
the world and human life ; he grows into 
intellectual strength, and trains himself 
into intellectual expertness. Impelled 
by the irrepressible movement of his 
inward spirit, he struggles forward into 
the general view, and with haughty 
modesty lays down before us, as the 
fruit of his labor, a gift, which Time 
has now pronounced imperishable. Add 
to all this, that his darksome, drudging 
childhood and youth was by far the 
kindliest era of his w^hole life ; and that 



Life of Burns. 77 

he died in his thirty-seventh year ; and 
then ask if it be strange that his poems 
are imperfect, and of small extent, or 
that his genius attained no mastery in 
its art ? Alas, his Sun shone as' through 
a tropical tornado ; and the pale Shadow 
of Death eclipsed it at noon ! Shrouded 
in such baleful vapors, the genius of 
Burns was never seen in clear azure 
splendor, enlightening the world. But 
some beams from it did, by fits, pierce 
through ; and it tinted those clouds with 
rainbow and orient colors into a glory 
and stern grandeur, which men silently 
gazed on with wonder and tears ! 

We are anxious not to exaggerate; 
for it is exposition rather than admira- 
tion that our readers require of us here ; 
and yet to avoid some tendency to that 
side is no easy matter. We love Burns, 
and we pity him ; and love and pity are 
prone to magnify. Criticism, it is some- 
times thought, should be a cold business; 



Y8 Life of Burns. 

we are not so sure of this ; but, at all 
events, our concern with Burns is not 
exclusively that of critics. True and 
genial as his poetry must appear, it is 
not chiefly as a poet, but as a man, that 
he interests and affects us. He was 
often advised to write a tragedy : time 
and means were not lent him for this ; 
but through life he enacted a tragedy, 
and one of the deepest. We question 
whether the world has since witnessed 
so utterly sad a scene ; whether l^apo- 
leon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hud- 
son Lowe, and perish on his rock, "amid 
the melancholy main," presented to the 
reflecting mind such a "spectacle of pity 
and fear," as did this intrinsically nobler, 
gentler, and perhaps greater soul, wast- 
ing itself away in a hopeless struggle 
with base entanglements, which coiled 
closer and closer round him, till only 
death opened him an outlet. Conquer- 
ors are a race with whom the world 



Life of Burns. 79 

could well dispense ; nor can the hard 
intellect, the nnsympathizing loftiness, 
and high but selfish enthusiasm of such 
persons, inspire us in general with any 
affection ; at best it may excite amaze- 
ment; and their fall, like that of a 
pyramid, will be beheld with a certain 
sadness and awe. But a true Poet, a 
man in whose heart resides some efflu- 
ence of Wisdom, some tone of the 
"Eternal Melodies," is the most pre- 
cious gift that can be hestowed on a 
generation : we see in him a freer, purer, 
development of whatever is noblest in 
ourselves ; his life is a rich lesson to us, 
and we mourn his death, as that of a 
benefactor who loved and taught us. 

Such a gift had i^Tature in her bounty 
bestowed on us in Eobert Burns ; but 
with queen-like indifference she cast it 
from her hand, like a thing of no mo- 
ment ; and it was defaced and torn a- 
sunder, as an idle bauble, before we re- 



80 Life of Burns. 

cognized it. To the ill-starred Burns 
was given the power of making man's 
life more venerable, but that of wisely 
guiding his own was not given. Destiny 
— for so in our ignorance we must si)eak, 
— his faults, the faults of others, proved 
too hard for him ; and that spirit, which 
might have soared, could it but have 
walked, soon sank to the dust, its glori- 
ous faculties trodden under foot in the 
blossom, and died, we may almost say, 
without ever having lived. And so kind 
and warm a soul ; so full of inborn rich- 
es, of love to all living and lifeless things ! 
How his heart flows out in sympathy over 
universal nature ; and in her bleakest 
provinces discerns a beauty and a mean- 
ing! The "Daisy" falls not unheeded 
under his ploughshare ; nor the ruined 
nest of that " wee, cowering, timorous 
beastie," cast forth, after all its provi- 
dent pains, to " thole the sleety dribble, 
and cranreuch cauld." The " hoar vis- 



Life of Burns, 81 

age" of Winter deliglits him : he dwells 
with a sad and oft-returning fondness in 
these .scenes of solemn desolation ; but 
the voice of the tempest becomes an an- 
them to his ears ; he loves to w^alk in the 
sounding woods, for "it raises his thoughts 
to Ilim that walketh on the wings of the 
windP A true Poet-soul, for it needs 
but to be struck, and the sound it yields 
will be music ! But observe him chiefly 
as he mingles with his brother men. 
"What warm, all-comprehending, fellow- 
feeling, what trustful, boundless love, 
what generous exaggeration of the ob- 
ject loved ! His rustic friend, his nut- 
brown maiden, are no longer mean and 
homely, but a hero and a queen, whom 
he prizes as the paragons of Earth. 
The rough scenes of Scottish life, not 
seen by him in any Arcadian illusion, 
but in the rude contradiction, in the 
smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, 
are still lovely to him : Poverty is in- 



82 Life of B'lbTns. 

deed his companion, but Love also, and 
Courage ; the simple feelings, the worth, 
the nobleness, that dwell under the 
si raw roof, are dear and venerable to 
his heart ; and thus over the lowest pro- 
vinces of man's existence he pours the 
glory of his own soul ; and they rise, in 
shadow and sunshine, softened and 
brightened into a beauty which other 
eyes discern not in the highest. He has 
a just self-consciousness, which too often 
degenerates into pride ; yet it is a noble 
pride, for defence, not for offence, no 
cold, suspicious feeling, but a frank and 
social one. The peasant Poet bears him- 
self, we might say, like a King in exile ; 
he is cast among the low, and feels him- 
self equal to the highest ; yet he claims 
no rank, that none may be disputed to 
him. The forward he can repel, the 
supercilious he can subdue ; pretensions 
of wealth or ancestry are of no avail 
with him ; there is a fire in that dark 



Life of Bicrns. 83 

eye, under which the " insolence of con- 
descension" cannot thrive. In his abase- 
ment, in his extreme need, he forgets 
not for a moment the majesty of Poetry 
and Manhood. And yet, far as he feels 
himself above common men, he wanders 
not apart from them, bnt mixes warmly 
in their interests ; nay, throws himself 
into their arms ; and, as it were, entreats 
them to love him. It is moving: to see 
how, in his darkest despondency, this 
pi-oud being still seeks relief from friend- 
ship ; unbosoms himself, often to the im- 
woi-thy ; and, amid tears, strains to his 
glowing heart a heart that knows only 
the name of friendship. And yet he 
was " cpick to learn ;" a man of keen 
vision, before whom common disguises 
afforded no concealment. His under- 
standing saw through the hollowness 
even of accomplished deceivers ; but 
there was a generous credulity in his 
Heart. And so did our Peasant show 



84: Life of Burns. 

himself among us; "a soul like an 
/Eolian harp, in whose strings the vul- 
gar wind, as it passed through them, 
changed itself into articulate melody." 
And this was he for whom the world 
found no fitter business than quarrelling 
with smugglers and vintners, computing 
excise dues upon tallow, and gauging 
ale-barrels ! In such toils was that 
mighty Spirit sorrowfully wasted : and 
a hundred years may pass on, before an- 
other such is given us to waste. 

All that remains of Burns, the Writ- 
ings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted 
above, no more than a poor mutilated 
fraction of what was in him ; brief, 
broken glimpses of a genius that could 
never show itself complete ; that wanted 
all things for completeness ; culture, leis- 
ure, true effort, nay, even length of life. 
His poems are, with scarcely any excep- 
tion, mere occasional effusions, poured 



Life of Burns. 85 

forth with little premeditation, express- 
ing, by such means as offered, the pas- 
sion, opinion, or hmnor of the hour. 
Never in one instance was it permitted 
him to grapple with anj^ subject with 
the full collection of his strength, to fuse 
and mould it in the concentrated fire of 
his genius. To try by the strict rules 
of Art such imperfect fragments, w^ould 
be at once unprofitable and unfair. 
ISTevertheless, there is something in 
these poems, marred and defective as 
they are, which forbids the most fas- 
tidious student of poetry to pass them 
by. Some sort of enduring quality they 
must have ; for, after fifty years of the 
wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they 
still continue to be read ; nay, are read 
more and more eagerly, more and more 
extensively; and this not only by lit- 
erary virtuosos, and that class upon 
w^hom transitory causes operate most 
strongly, but by all classes, down to the 



I 



Life of B%bTns. 



\ 



most hard, unlettered, and truly natural 
class, who read little, and especially no 
poetry, except because they find pleas- 
ure in it. The grounds of so singular 
and wide a popularity, which extends, 
in a literal sense, from the palace to the 
hut, and over all regions where the 
English tongue is spoken, are well 
w^orth inquiring into. After every just 
deduction, it seems to imply some rare 
excellence in these works. "What is 
that excellence ? 

To answer this question will not lead 
us far. The excellence of Burns is, 
indeed, among the rarest, whether in 
poetry or prose ; but, at the same time, 
it is plain and easily recognized: his 
SinGerity^ his indisputable air of Truth. 
Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no 
hollow fantastic sentimentalities ; no 



wiredrawn refinings, either in thought 
or feeling: the passion that is traced 
before us has glowed in a living heart ; 



L^f^ ^f Burois. 87 

the opinion lie utters has risen in liis 
own understanding, and been a light to 
his own steps. He does not write from 
hearsay, but from sight and experience ; 
it is the scenes he has lived and labored 
amidst, that he describes : those scenes, 
rude and humble as they are, have kin- 
dled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble 
thoughts, and definite resolves ; and he 
speaks forth wdiat is in him, not from 
any outward call of vanity or interest, 
but because his heart is too full to be 
silent. Ho speaks it, too, with such 
melody and modulation as he can ; " in 
homely rustic jingle ;" but it is his own, 
and genuine. This is the grand secret 
for finding readers and retaining them : 
let him who would move and convince 
others, be first moved and convinced 
himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me fl^ 
is applicable in a wider sense than'^the 
literal one. To every poet, to every 
writer, we might say : Be true, if you 



88 Life of Burns. 

would be believed. Let a man but 
speak forth with genuine earnestness 
the thought, the emotion, the actual 
condition, of his own heart ; and other 
men, so strangely are we all knit to- 
gether by the tie of sympathy, must 
and will give heed to him. In culture, 
in extent of view, we may stand above 
the speaker, or below him ; but in either 
case, his words, if they are earnest and 
sincere, will find some response witliin 
us ; for in spite of all casual varieties in 
outward rank, or inward, as face an- 
swers to face, so does the heart of man 
to man. 

This may appear a very simple prin- 
ciple, and one which Burns had little 
merit in discovering. True, the discov- 
^ei^y is easy enough; but the practical 
appliance is not easy ; is indeed the fun- 
damental difiiculty which all poets have 
to strive with, and which scarcely one 
in the hundred ever fairly surmounts. 



^^f^ of BuTois. 89 



A head too dull to discriminate tlie true 
from the false ; a heart too dull to love 
the one at all risks, and to hate the 
other in spite of all temptations, are 
alike fatal to a writer. With either, or, 
as more commonly happens, with both, 
of these deficiencies, combine a love of 
distinction, a wish to be original, which 
is seldom wanting, and we have Affec- 
tation, the bane of literature, as Cant, 
its elder brother, is of morals. How 
often does the one and the other front 
us, in poetry, as in life! Great poets 
themselves are not always free of this 
vice; nay, it is precisely on a certain 
sort and degree of greatness that it is 
most commonly ingrafted. A strong 
effort after excellence will sometimes 
solace itself with a mere shadow of suc- 
cess, and he who has much to unfold, 
will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. 
Byron, for instance, was no common 
man : yet if we examine his poetry with 



90 I^^f^ of Burns. 

this- view, we shall find it far enough 
from faultless. Generally speaking, w^e 
should say that it is not true. He re- 
freshes us, not with the divine fountain, 
but too often with vulgar strong waters, 
stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon 
ending in dislike or even nausea. Are 
his Harolds and Giaours, w^e would ask, 
real men, we mean, poetically consistent 
and conceivable men? Do not these 
characters, does not the character of 
their author, which more or less shines 
through them all, rather appear a thing 
put on for the occasion ; no natural or 
possible mode of being, but something 
intended to look much grander than 
nature? Surely, all these stormful ago- 
nies, this volcanic heroism, su23erhuman 
contempt, and moody desperation, with 
so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, 
and other sulphurous humors, is more 
like the brawling of a player in some 
paltry tragedy, which is to last three 



Life of Burns, 91 

hours, than the bearing of a man in the 
business of life, which is to last three- 
score and ten years. To our minds, there 
is a taint of this sort, something which 
we should call theatrical, false and af- 
fected, in every one of these otherwise 
powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan,, 
especially the latter parts of it, is the 
only thing approaching to a sincere work, 
he ever wrote ; the only work where he 
showed himself, in any measure, as he 
was ; and seemed so intent on his sub- 
ject, as, for moments, to forget himself. 
Yet Byron hated this vice ; we believe, 
heartily detested it : nay, he had de- 
clared formal war against it in words. 
So difficult is it even for the strongest 
to make this primary attainment, which 
might seem the simplest of all: to read 
its oion consciousness without mistakes^ 
without errors involuntar}^ or wilful! 
We recollect no poet of Burns's suscep- 
tibility who comes before us from the 



92 Life of Burns. 

first, and abides with us to the last, with 
such a total want of affectation. He is 
an honest man, and an honest writer. 
In his successes and his failures, in his 
greatness and his littleness, he is evei' 
clear, simple, true, and glitters with no 
lustre but his own. We reckon this to 
be a great virtue ; to be, in fact, the 
root of most other virtues, literary as 
well as moral. 

It is necessary, however, to mention, 
that it is to the poetry of Burns that we 
now allude ; to those writings which he 
had time to meditate, and where no 
special reason existed to warp his criti- 
cal feeling, or obstruct his endeavor 
to fulfil it. Certain of his Letters, and 
other fractions of prose composition, by 
no means deserve this praise. Here, 
doubtless, there is not the same natural 
truth of style; but on the contrary, 
something not only stiff, but strained 
and twisted; a certain high-flown, in- 



Life of Burns. 93 

flated tone ; the stilting emphasis of 
which contrasts ill with the firmness and 
rugged simplicity of even his poorest 
verses. Thus no man, it would appear, 
is altogether nnaifected. Does not 
Shakspeare himself sometimes premed- 
itate the sheerest bombast ! But even 
with regard to these Letters of Burns, it 
is but fair to state that he had two ex- 
cuses. The first was his comparative 
deficiency in language. Burns, though 
for most part he w^rites with singular 
force, and even gracefulness, is not mas- 
ter of English prose, as he is of Scottish 
verse ; not master of it, we mean, in 
proportion to the depth and vehemence 
of his matter. These Letters strike us 
as the effort of a man to express some- 
thing which he has no organ fit for ex- 
pressing. But a second and weightier 
excuse is to be found in the peculiarity 
of Burns's social rank. His correspon- 
dents are often men whose relation to 



94 Life of Burns. 

liim he has never accurately ascertained ; 
whom therefore he is either forearming 
himself against, or else unconsciously 
flattering, by adopting the style he 
thinks will please them. At all events, 
we should remember tliat these faults, 
even in his Letters, are not the rule, but 
the exception. Whenever he writes, 
as one would ever wish to do, to trusted 
friends and on real interests, his style 
becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, 
sometimes even beautiful. His Letters 
to Mrs. Dunlop are uniformly excellent. 
But we return to his j^oetry. Li ad- 
dition to its sincerity, it has another 
peculiar merit, which indeed is but a 
mode, or perhaps a means, of the fore- 
going. It displays itself in liis choice 
of subjects, or rather in his indifference 
as to subjects, and the power he has of 
making all subjects interesting. The 
ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is 
for ever seeking, in external circumstan- 



Life of B terns, 



ces, the help which can be found only 
in himself. In what is familiar and near 
at hand, he discerns no form or comeli- 
ness ; home is not poetical but prosaic ; 
it is in some past, distant, conventional 
world, that poetry resides for him ; were 
he there and not here, were he thus and 
not so, it would be well with him. 
Hence our innumerable host of rose- 
colored novels and iron-mailed epics, 
with their locality not on the Earth, but 
somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence 
our Yirgins of the Sun, and our Knights 
of the Cross, malicious Saracens in tur- 
bans, and copper-colored Chiefs in wam- 
pum, and so many other truculent figures 
from the heroic times or the heroic cli- 
mates, who on all hands swarm in our 
poetry. Peace be with them ! But yet, 
as a great moralist proposed preaching 
to the men of this century, so would we 
fain preach to the poets, "a sermon on 
the duty of staying at home." Let 



96 Life of Burns. 

them be sure that heroic ages and heroic 
climates can do little for them. That 
form of life has attraction for ns, less 
because it is better or nobler than our 
own, than simply because it is different ; 
and even this attraction must be of the 
most transient sort. For will not our own 
age, one day, be an ancient one ; and 
have as quaint a costume as the rest; 
not contrasted with the rest, therefore, 
but ranked along with them, in respect 
of quaintness ? Does Homer interest us 
now, because he wrote of wdiat passed 
out of his native Greece, and tw^o cen- 
turies before he was born ; or because 
he wrote of what passed in God's world, 
and in the heart of man, wdiicli is the 
same after thirty centuries? Let our 
poets look to this; is their feeling 
really finer, truer, and their vision deeper 
than that of other men, they have noth- 
ing to fear, even from the humblest 
object ; is it not so ? — they have nothing 



Life of Btcrns. 97 

to hope, but an epliemeral favor, even 
from the highest. 

The poet, we cannot bnt think, can 
never have far to seek for a subject ; the 
elements of his art are in him, and 
around him on every hand ; for him the 
Ideal world is not remote from the 
Actual, but under it and within it ; nay, 
he is a poet, precisely because he can 
discern it there. Wherever there is a 
sky above him, and a world around him, 
the poet is in his place ; for here too is 
man's existence, with its infinite long- 
ings and smal] acquirings; its ever- 
thwarted, ever-renewed endeavors; its 
unspeakable aspirations, its fears and 
hopes that wander through Eternity : 
and all the mystery of brightness and 
of gloom that it was ever made of, in 
any age or climate, since man first began 
to live. Is there not tlie fifth act of a 
Tragedy, in every death-bed, though it 
w^ere a peasant's and a bed of heath? 
7 



98 Life of Burns. 

And are wooings and weddings obsolete, 
that there can be Comedy no longer? 
Or are men suddenly grown wise, that 
Laughter must no longer shake his sides, 
but be cheated of his Farce ? Man's 
life and nature is, as it was, and as it will 
ever be. But the poet must have an 
eye to read these things, and a heart to 
understand them ; or they come and 
pass away before him in vain. He is a 
vates^ a seer ; a gift of vision has been 
given him. Has life no meanings for 
him, which another can not equally de- 
cipher ? then he is no poet, and Delphi 
itself will not make him one. 

In this respect. Burns, though not 
perhaps absolutely a great poet, better 
manifests his capability, better proves 
the truth of his genius, tlian if he had, 
by his own strength, kept the whole 
Minerva Press going, to the end of his 
literary course. He shows himself at 
least a poet of Nature's own making; 



Life of Burns. 99 

and J^ature, after all, is still the grand 
agent in making poets. We often hear 
of this and the other external condition 
being requisite for the existence of a 
poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of 
training ; he must have studied certain 
things, studied for instance " the elder 
dramatists," and so learned a poetic lan- 
guage ; as if poetry lay in the tongue, 
not in the heart. At other times we are 
told, he must be bred in a certain rank, 
and must be on a confidential footing: 
with the higher classes ; because, above 
all other things, he must see the world. 
As to seeing the world, we apprehend 
this will cause him little difficulty, if he 
have but an eye to see it with. With- 
out eyes, indeed, the task might be hard. 
But happily every poet is born in the 
world, and sees it, wdth or against liis 
wull, every day and every hour he lives. 
The mysterious workmanship of man's 
heart, the true light and the inscrutable 



100 Life of Burns. 

darkness of man's destiny, reveal them- 
selves not only in capital cities and 
crowded saloons, but in every hut and 
hamlet where men have their abode. 
Nay, do not the elements of all human 
virtues, and all human vices — the pas- 
sions at once of a Borgia and of a Lu- 
ther, lie written, in stronger or fainter 
lines, in the consciousness of every indi- 
vidual bosom, that has practised honest 
self-examination? Truly, this same world 
may be seen in Mossgiel and Tarbolton, 
if we look well, as clearly as it ever 
came to light in Crockford's, or the Tuil- 
eries itself. 

But sometimes still harder requisitions 
are laid on the poor aspirant to poetry ; 
for it is hinted that he should have leen 
horn two centuries ago; inasmuch as 
poetry, soon after that date, vanished 
from the earth, and became no longer 
attainable by men ! Such cobweb spec- 
ulations have, now and then, overhung 



Life of Burns. 101 

the field of literature ; but tliey obstruct 
not the growth of any plant there : the 
Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously, 
and merely as he walks onw^ard, silently 
brushes them away. Is not every genius 
an impossibility till he appear? Why 
do we call him new and original, if we 
saw where his marble w^as lying, and 
what fabric he could rear from it ? It 
is not the material but the workman 
that is wanting. It is not the dark ])lace 
that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scot- 
tish peasant's life was the meanest and 
rudest of all lives, till Burns became a 
poet in it, and a poet of it ; found it a 
mcm^s life, and therefore significant to 
men. A. thousand battle-fields remain 
unsung ; but the Wounded Hare has not 
perished without its memorial ; a balm 
of mercy yet breathes on us from its 
dumb agonies, because a poet was there. 
Our Halloween had passed and repassed, 
in rude awe and laughter, since the era 



102 Life of Burns. 

of the Druids; but no Theocritus, till 
Burns, discerned in it the materials of a 
Scottish Idyl : neither was the Holy Fair 
any Council of Trent ^ or Roman Jubi- 
lee ', but nevertheless, Superstition and 
Hypocrisy^ and Fun having been pro- 
pitious to him, in this ^nan's hand it be- 
came a poem, instinct with satire, and 
genuine comic life. Let but the true 
poet be given us, we repeat it, place 
him where and how you will, and true 
poetry will not be wanting. 

Independently of the essential gift of 
poetic feeling, as we have now attempt- 
ed to describe it, a certain rugged ster- 
ling worth pervades whatever Burns 
has written : a virtue, as of green fields 
and mountain breezes, dwells in his 
poetry ; it is redolent of natural life, and 
hardy, natural men. There is a deci- 
sive strength in him ; and yet a sweet 
native gracefulness : he is tender, and 
he is vehement, yet without constraint 



Life of Burns. 103 

or too visible effort ; he melts the heart, 
or inflames it, with a power which seems 
habitual and familiar to him. We see 
in him the gentleness, the trembling 
pity of a woman, with the deep earnest- 
ness, the force and passionate ardor of a 
hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming 
fire ; as lightning lurks in the drops of 
the summer cloud. He has a resonance 
in his bosom for every note of human 
feeling : the high and the low, the sad, 
the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome 
in their turns to his " lightly-moved and 
all-conceiving spirit." And observe 
with what a prompt and eager force he 
grasps his subject, be it what it may! 
How he fixes, as it were, the full image 
of the matter in his eye ; full and clear 
in every lineament; and catches the 
real type and essence of it, amid a thou- 
sand accidents and superficial circum- 
stances, no one of which misleads him ! 
Is it of reason — some truth to be dis- 



104 Life of Burns, 

covered ? ]^o sophistry, no vain surface- 
logic detains him ; quick, resolute, un- 
erring, he pierces through into the mar- 
row of the question, and speaks his 
verdict with an emphasis that can not 
be forgotten. Is it of description — some 
visual object to be represented? N^o 
poet of any age or nation is more graphic 
than Burns : the characteristic features 
disclose themselves to him at a glance ; 
three lines from his hand, and we have 
a likeness. And, in that rough dialect, 
in that rude, often awkward, metre, so 
clear, and definite a likeness ! It seems 
a draughtsman working with a burnt 
stick ; and yet the burin of a Retzsch is 
not more expressive or exact. 

This clearness of sight we may call 
the foundation of all talent ; for in fact, 
unless we see our object, how shall we 
know how to place or prize it, in our 
understanding, our imagination, our af- 
fections? Yet it is not in itself per- 



Life of Bitrns. 105 

haps a very high excellence ; but capable 
of being nnited indifferently with the 
strongest, or with ordinary powers. Ho- 
mer surpasses all men in this quality : 
but strangely enough, at no great dis- 
tance below him are Kichardson and 
Defoe. It belongs, in truth, to what is 
called a lively mind : and gives no sure 
indication of the higher endowments 
that may exist along with it. In all the 
three cases we have mentioned, it is 
combined with great garrulity; their 
descriptions are detailed, ample, and 
lovingly exact ; Homer's fire bursts 
through, from time to time, as if by 
accident ; but Defoe and Kichardson 
have no fire. Burns, again, is not more 
distinguished by the clearness than by 
the impetuous force of his conceptions. 
Of the strength, the piercing emphasis 
with which he thought, his emphasis of 
expression may give an humble but the 
readiest proof. Who ever uttered sharper 



106 Life of Bums. 

sayings tlian his ; words more memora- 
ble, now by their burning vehemence, 
now by their cool vigor and laconic 
pith ? A single phrase depicts a whole 
subject, a whole scene. Our Scottish 
forefathers in the battle-field struggled 
forward, he says, ''' red-wat shod f^ giv- 
ing, in this one word, a full vision of 
horror and carnage, perhaps too fright- 
fully accurate for Art ! 

In fact, one of the leading features in 
the mind of Burns is this vigor of his 
strictly intellectual perceptions. A reso- 
lute force is ever visible in his judgments, 
as in his feelings and volitions. Pro- 
fessor Stewart says of him, with some 
surprise : '' All the faculties of Burns's 
mind were, as far as I could judge, 
equally vigorous ; and his predilection 
for poetry was rather the result of his 
own enthusiastic and impassioned tem- 
per, than of a genius exclusively adapt- 
ed to that species of composition. From 



Life of Burns. 107 

his conversation I should have pronounc- 
ed him to be fitted to excel in whatever 
walk of ambition he had chosen to exert 
his abilities." But this, if we mistake 
not, is at all times the very essence of a 
truly poetical endowment. Poetry, ex- 
cept in such cases as that of Keats, 
where the whole consists in extreme 
sensibility, and a certain vague pervad- 
ing tunefulness of nature, is no separate 
faculty, no organ wdiich can be super- 
added to the rest or disjoined from 
them ; but rather the result of their 
general harmony and completion. The 
feelings, the gifts, that exist in the Poet, 
are those that exist, with more or less 
development, in every human soul : the 
imagination, which shudders at the Hell 
of Dante, is the same faculty, weaker in 
degree, which called that picture into 
being. How does the poet speak to all 
men, with power, but by being still 
more a man than they % Shakspeare, it 



108 L^f^ of Biivns. 

lias been well observed, in the planning 
and completing of his tragedies, has 
shown an Understanding, were it noth- 
ing more, which might have governed 
states, or indited a Novum Orgamiin. 
What Burns's force of understanding 
may have been, we have less means of 
judgment: for it dwelt among the hum- 
blest objects, never saw philosophy, and 
never rose, except for short intervals, 
into the region of great ideas. ISTever- 
theless, sufficient indication remains for 
us in his works : we discern the brawny 
movement of a gigantic though untutor- 
ed strength, and can understand how, in 
conversation, his quick, sure insight into 
men and things may, as much as aught 
else about him, have amazed the best 
thinkers of his time and country. 

But, unless we mistake, the intellectual 
gift of Burns is fine as well as strong. 
The more delicate relation of things 
could not well have escaped his eye, for 



Life of Burns. 109 

they were intimately present to his 
heart. The logic of the senate and the 
forum is indispensable, but not all-snffi- 
cient ; nay, perhaps the highest Truth is 
that which will the most certainly elude 
it. For this logic works by words, and 
" the highest," it has been said, " cannot 
be expressed in words." We are not 
without tokens of an openness for this 
higher truth also, of a keen though un- 
cultivated sense for it, having existed in 
Burns. Mr. Stewart, it will be remem- 
bered, *' wonders," in the passage above 
quoted, that Burns had formed some 
distinct conception of the " doctrine of 
association." We rather think that far 
subtiler tilings than the doctrine of as- 
sociation had from of old been familiar 
to him. Here for instance : 

" "We know nothing," thus writes he, 
" or next to nothing, of the structure of 
our souls, so we cannot account for those 
seeming caprices in them, that one 



110 Life of Burns. 

should be particularly pleased with this 
thing, or struck with that, w^hich, on 
minds of a different cast, makes no ex- 
traordinary impression. I have some 
favorite flowers in spring, among which 
are the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, 
the fox-glove, the wild-brier rose, the 
budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, 
that I view and hang over with partic- 
ular delight. I never hear the loud 
solitary whistle of the curlew in a sum- 
mer noon, or the wild mixing cadence 
of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal 
morning, without feeling an elevation 
of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion 
or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to 
what can this be owing? Are we a 
piece of machinery, which, like the 
^olian harp, passive, takes the impress- 
ion of the passing accident ; or do these 
workings argue something within us 
above the trodden clod ? I own myself 
partial to such proofs of those awful and 



Life of Burns. Ill 

important realities : a God that made all 
things, man's immaterial and immortal 
nature, and a world of weal or wo be- 
yond death and the grave." 

Force and fineness of understanding 
are often spoken of as something differ- 
ent from general force and fineness of 
nature, as something partly independent 
of them. The necessities of language 
probably require this ; but in truth these 
qualities are not distinct and independ- 
ent : except in special cases, and from 
special causes, they ever go together. 
A man of strong understanding is gen- 
erally a man of strong character ; neither 
is delicacy in the one kind often divided 
from delicacy in the otlier. E"o one, at 
all events, is ignorant that in the poetry 
of Burns, keenness of insight keeps pace 
with keenness of feeling ; that his light 
is not more pervading than his warmth. 
He is a man of the most impassioned 
temper ; with passions not strong only, 



112 Life of Burns. 

but noble, and of the sort in which great 
virtues and great poems take their rise. 
It is reverence, it is Love towards all 
]S"ature that inspires him, that opens his 
eyes to its beauty, and makes heart and 
voice eloquent in its praise. There is 
a true old saying, that "love furthers 
knowledge :" but, above all, it is the liv- 
ing essence of that knowledge which 
makes poets; the first principle of its 
existence, increase, activity. Of Burns's 
fervid affection, his generous, all-embrac- 
ing Love, we have spoken already, as of 
the grand distinction of his nature, seen 
equally in word and deed, in his Life 
and in his Writings. It were easy to 
multiply examples, l^ot man only, but 
all that environs man in the material 
and moral nniverse, is lovely in his 
sight: "the hoary hawthorn," the "troop 
of gray plover," the " solitary curlew," 
are all dear to him — all live in this 
Earth along with him, and to all he is 



Life of Burns. 113 

k 1 1 i t as in mysterious brotherhood. How 
toucliiiig' is it, for instance, that, amidst 
tlie gloom of personal misery, brooding 
over tlie wintry desolation without him 
and witliin him, he thinks of the "ourie 
cattle" and '' silly sheep," and their suf- 
ferings in the pitiless storm ! 

" I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 

0' wintry war; 
Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle, 

Beneath a scaur. 

Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, 
That in the merry month o' spring 
Delighted me to hear thee sing, 

What comes o' thee? 
Where wilt thou coAv'r thy chittering wing, 

And close thy ee '?" 

The tenant of the mean hut, with its 
" ragged roof and chinky wall," has a 
heart to pity even these ! Tliis is worth 
several homilies on Mercy ; for it is the 
voice of Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, 
lives in sympathy ; his soul rushes forth 
8 



114 Life of Burns. 

into all realms of being; nothing that 
has existence can be indifferent to him. 
The very devil he cannot hate with right 
orthodoxy 1 

"But fare yovi weel, auld Nickie-ben ; 
wad ye ttik a thought and men' ! 
Ye aiblins might, — I dinna ken, — 

Still hae a stake; 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den. 

Even for your sake!" 

He did not know, probably, that Sterne 
had been beforehand with him. " ' He 
is the father of curses and lies,' said Dr. 
Slop ; ' and is cursed and damned al- 
ready.' — ' I am sorry for it,' quoth my 
uncle Toby !" — " A poet without Love, 
were a physical and metaphysical im- 
possibility." 

Why should we speak of Bcots^ wha 
hae wi'' Wallace hied ; since all know it, 
from the king to the meanest of his sub- 
jects ? This dithyrambic was composed 
on horseback ; in riding in the middle of 



Life of Burns. 115 



tempests, over the wildest Galloway 
moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, 
who, observing the j^oet's looks, fore- 
bore to speak,— judiciously enough,— 
for a man composing Bruce s Address 
might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubt- 
less this stern hynm was singing itself, 
as he formed it, through the soul of 
Burns ; but to the external ear, it should 
be sung with tlie throat of the whirlwind. 
So long as there is warm blood in the 
heart of a Scotchman or man, it will 
move in fierce thrills under this war-ode, 
the best, we believe, that was ever writ- 
ten by any pen. 

Another wild, stormful song, that 
dwells in our ear and mind with a 
strange tenacity, is MaepJierson' s Fare- 
xoell. Perhaps there is something in 
the tradition itself that co-operates. 
For was not this grim Celt, this shaggy 
IS'orthland Cacus, that "lived a life of 
sturt and strife, and died by treacherie," 



116 Life of Burns. 

was not ho too one of the Nimrods and 
Napoleons of the earth, in the arena of 
his own remote misty glens, for want 
of a clearer and wider one ? Nay, was 
there not a touch of grace given him ? 
A fibre of love and softness, of poetry 
itself, must have lived in his savage 
heart; for he composed that air the 
night before his execution ; on the 
wings of that poor melody, his better 
soul would soar away above oblivion, 
pain, and all the ignominy and despair, 
which, like an avalanche, was hurling 
him to the abyss ! Here, also, as at 
Thebes, and in Pelops' line, was mate- 
rial Fate matched against man's Free- 
will; matched in bitterest though ob- 
scure duel ; and the ethereal soul sunk 
not, even in its blindness, without a cry 
which has survived it. But who, ex- 
cept Burns, could have given words to 
such a soul — words that we never listen 



Life of Burns. 117 

to without a strange half-barbarous, 
half-poetic fellow-feeling ? 

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 

Sue dauntlngly gaed lie; 
He play' d a sjmng, and danced it round, 

Below tJie galloios tree. 

Under a lighter and thinner disguise, 
the same principle of Love, which we 
have recognized as the great character- 
istic of Burns, and of all true poets, occa- 
sionally manifests itself in the shape of 
Humor. Everywhere, indeed, in his 
sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of 
mirth rolls through the mind of Burns ; 
he rises to the high, and stoops to the 
low, and is brother and playmate to all 
Nature. "We speak not of his bold and 
often irresistible faculty of caricature; 
for this is Drollery rather than Humor : 
but a much tenderer sportfulness dwells 
in him ; and comes forth, here and there, 
in evanescent and beautiful touches ; as 
in his Address to the Mouse, or the Far- 



118 Life of Burns. 

mer^s Mare, or in his Elegy on Poor 
Mailie, which last may be reckoned his 
happiest effort of this kind. In these 
pieces, there are traits of ,a Humor as 
fine as tliat of Sterne ; yet altogether 
different, original, ]3ecnliar, — the Hu- 
mor of Burns. 

Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, 
and many other kindred qualities of 
Buriis's poetry, much more might be 
said ; but now, with these poor outlines 
of a sketch, we must prepare to quit this 
part of our subject. To speak of his in- 
dividual writings, adequately, and with 
any detail, would lead us far beyond our 
limits. As already hinted, we can look 
on but few of these pieces as, in strict 
critical language, deserving the name of 
Poems; they are rhymed eloquence, 
rhymed pathos, rhymed sense ; yet sel- 
dom essentially melodious, aerial, poeti- 
cal. Tarn O'Shanter itself, which enjoys 
so high a favor, does not appear to us. 



Life of Burns. 119 

at all decisively, to come under tins last 
categoiy. It is not so miicli a poem, as 
a piece of sparkling rhetoric ; the heart 
and body of the story still lies hard and 
dead. He has not gone back, much less 
carried us back, into that dark, earnest 
wondering age, when the tradition was 
believed, and when it took its rise ; he 
does not attempt, by any new modelling 
of his supernatural ware, to strike anew 
that deep mysterious chord of human 
nature, which once responded to such 
things; and which lives in us too, and 
will forever live, though silent, or vibrat- 
ing with far other notes, and to far dif- 
ferent issues. Our German readers w^ill 
understand us, wdien we say, that he is 
not the Tieck but the Musaus of this 
tale. Externally it is all green and 
living; yet look closer, it is no fom 
growth, but only ivy on a rock. The 
piece does not properly coliere ; the 
strange chasm which yawns in our in- 



120 Life of Burns. 

credulous imaginations between the Ayr 
public-house and the gate of Tophet, is 
nowhere bridged over, nay, the idea of 
such a bridge is laughed at; and thus 
the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a 
mere drunken phantasmagoria, painted 
on ale-vapors, and the farce alone has 
any reality. We do not say that Burns 
should have made much more of this 
tradition ; we rather think that, for 
strictly poetical purposes, not much was 
to be made of it. l!^either are we blind 
to the deep, varied, genial power dis- 
played in what he has actually accom- 
plished : but we find far more '' Shaks- 
pearian" qualities, as these of Tarn 
O^Shanter have been fondly named, in 
many of his other pieces ; nay, we in- 
cline to believe, that this latter might 
have been written, all but quite as well, 
by a man who, in place of genius, had 
only possessed talent. 

Perhaps we may venture to say, that 



Life of Burns. 121 

tlie most strictly poetical of all his 
" poems " is one, wliicli does not appear 
in Carrie's Edition ; but has been often 
printed before and since, nnder the hum- 
ble title of The Jolly Beggars. The 
subject truly is among the lowest in 
nature ; but it only the more shows our 
poet's gift in raising it into the domain 
of Art. To our minds, this piece seems 
thoroughl}^ compacted; melted together, 
refined ; and poured forth in one flood 
of true liquid harmony. It is light, 
airy, and soft of movement ; yet sharp 
and precise in its details ; every face is 
a portrait : that raude carlin^ that wee 
Apollo^ that Son of Mars^ are Scottish, 
yet ideal ; the scene is at once a dream, 
and the very Eag-castle of "Poosie- 
Nansie." Farther, it seems in a consid- 
erable degree complete, a real self-sup- 
porting Whole, which is the highest 
merit in a poem. The blanket of the 
night is drawn asunder for a moment ; 



122 Life of Burns. 

in full, ruddy, and flaming liglit, these 
rougli tatterdemalions are seen in their 
boisterous revel ; for the strong pulse of 
Life vindicates its right to gladness even 
here ; and when the curtain closes, we 
prolong the action without eifort; the 
next day, as the last, onr Caird and our 
Balladmonger are singing and soldier- 
ing ; tlieir " brats and callets " are hawk- 
ing, begging, cheating ; and some other 
night, in new combinations, they will 
ring from Fate another hour of wassail 
and good cheer. It would be strange, 
doubtless, to call this the best of Burns's 
writings ; we mean to say only, that it 
seems to us the most perfect of its kind, 
as a piece of poetical composition, 
strictly so called. In the Beggar's Ojpera^ 
in the Beggar^ s Busily as other critics 
have already remarked, there is nothing 
which, in real poetic vigor, equals this 
Cantata ; nothing, as we think, which 
comes within many degrees of it. 



Life of Burns. 123 



But l)j far the most finished, complete, 
and truly inspired pieces of Burns are, 
without dispute, to be found among his 
Songs. It is here that, although through 
a small aperture, his light shines with 
the least obstruction; in its highest 
beauty-, and pure sunny clearness. The 
reason may be, that Song is a brief and 
simple species of composition : and re- 
quires nothing so mncli for its perfection 
as genuine poetic feeling, genuine music 
of heart. The Song has its rules equally 
with the Tragedy ; rules which in most 
cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases 
are not so much as felt. We mi^ht 
wu-ite a long essay on the Songs of 
Burns ; which we reckon by far the best 
that Britain has yet produced ; for, in- 
deed, since the era of Queen Elizabeth, 
we know not that, by any other hand, 
aught truly worth attention has been 
accomplished in this department. True, 
we have songs enough " by persons of 



124: Life of Burns. 

quality ;" we have tawdry, hollow, wine- 
bred, madrigals; many a rhymed 
'' speech " in the flowing and watery 
vein of Ossorius the Portugal Bishop, 
rich in sonorous words, and, for moral, 
dashed perhaps with some tint of a sen- 
timental sensuality; all which many 
persons cease not from endeavoring to 
sing : though for most part, we fear, the 
music is but from the throat outward, or 
at best from some region far enough 
short of \h.Q Soul / not in which, but in 
a certain inane Limbo of the Fancy, or 
even in some vaporous debatable land 
on the outside of the IsTervous System, 
most of such madrigals and rhymed 
speeches seem to have originated. With 
the Songs of Burns we must not name 
these things. Independently of the clear, 
manly, heartfelt sentiment that ever 
pervades his poetry, his Songs are hon- 
est in another point of view : in form as 
well as in sj)irit. They do not affect to 



Life of Burns. 125 

be set to music ; but tliey actually and 
in themselves are music ; they have re- 
ceived their life, and fashioned them- 
selves together, in the medium of Har- 
mony, as Yenus rose from the bosom 
of the sea. The story, the feeling, is 
not detailed, but suggested; not said., 
or spouted, in rhetorical completeness 
and coherence ; but sung^ in fitful gushes, 
in glowing hints, in fantastic breaks, in 
vjarUings not of the voice only, but of 
the whole mind. "We consider this to 
be the essence of a song ; and that no 
songs- since the little careless catches, 
and, as it were, drops of song, which 
Shakspeare has here and there sprinkled 
over his plays, fulfil this condition in 
nearly the same degree as most of 
Burns's do. Such grace and truth of 
external movement, too, presupposes in 
general a corresponding force and truth 
of sentiment, and inward meaning. The 
Songs of Burns are not more perfect in 



126 Life of Burns. 

the former quality than in the latter. 
"With what tenderness he sings, yet with 
what vehemence and entireness ! There 
is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the 
purest rapture in his joy : he burns 
with the sternest ire, or laughs with the 
loudest or slyest mirth ; and yet he is 
sweet and soft, "sweet as the smile 
when fond lovers meet, and soft as their 
parting tear !" If we farther take into 
account the immense variety of his sub- 
jects ; how, from the loud flowing revel 
in Willie 'breio'd a jpeck 6' Maiit^ to the 
still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness iov Ifcci^y 
in Heaven / from the glad kind greeting 
of Aitld Langsyne^ or the comic arch- 
ness of Duncan Gray^ to the fire-eyed 
fury of Scots^ %clia liae wi^ Wallace hled^ 
he has found a tone and words for every 
mood of man's heart, — it will seem a 
small praise if we rank him as the first 
of all our song-w^riters ; for we know not 



L^f^ of Burns. 127 



where to find one wortlij of being 
second to him. ^ 

It is on his Songs, as we believe, that 
Burns's chief influence as an author will 
ultimately be found to depend : nor, if 
our Fletcher's aphorism is true, shall we 
account this a small influence. "Let 
me make the songs of a people," said 
he, " and you shall make its laws." 
Surely, if ever any Poet might have 
equalled himself with Legislators, on 
this ground, it was Burns. His songs 
are already part of the mother tongue, 
not of Scotland only but of Britain, and 
of the millions that in all the ends of 
the earth speak a British language. Li 
hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself 
in the joy and wo of existence, the name, 
the voice of that joy and that wo, is the 
name and voice which Burns has ffiven 
them. Strictly speaking, perhaps, no 
British man has so deeply aff'ected the 
thoughts and feelings of so many men 



128 Life of Burns. 

as this solitary and altogether private 
individual, with means apparently the 
humblest. 

In another point of view, moreover, 
we incline to think that Burns's influ- 
ence may have been considerable : we 
mean, as exerted specially on the Lite- 
rature of his country, at least on the 
Literature of Scotland. Among the 
great changes which British, particu- 
larly Scottish literature, has undergone 
since that period, one of the greatest 
will be found to consist in its remarka- 
ble increase of nationality. Even the 
English writers, most popular in Burns's 
time, were little distinguished for their 
literary patriotism, in this its best sense. 
A certain attenuated cosmopolitanism 
had, in good measure, taken place of 
the old insular home-feeling ; literature 
was, as it were, without any local envi- 
ronment — was not nourished by the 
affections which spring from a native 



-^i^^ ^f Burns. 129 

soil. Our Grays and Glovers seemed 
to write almost as if in vacuo ; the thing 
written bears no mark of place ; it is not 
written so much for Englishmen, as for 
men ; or rather, which is the inevitable 
result of this, for certain Generalizations 
which philosophy termed men. Gold- 
smith is an exception ; not so Johnson ; 
the scene of his EamUer is little more 
English than that of his Basselas. But 
if such was, in some degree, the case 
with England, it was, in the highest 
degree, the case with Scotland. In fact, 
our Scottish literature had, at that peri- 
od, a very singular aspect ; unexampled, 
so f\ir as we know, except perhaps at 
Geneva, where the same state of matters 
appears still to continue. For a long 
period after Scotland became British, 
we had no literature : at the date when 
xiddison and Steele were writins: their 
Spectators^ our good Thomas Boston was 
writing, with the noblest intent, but 
9 



130 Life of Burns. 

alike in defiance of grammar and phil- 
osophy, his Fourfold State of Man. 
Then came the schisms in our National 
Church, and the fiercer schisms in our 
Body Politic : Theologic ink, and Jaco- 
bite blood, with gaul enough in both 
cases, seemed to have blotted out the 
intellect of the country ; however, it Avas 
only obscured, not obliterated. Lord 
Karnes made nearly the first attempt, 
and a tolerably clumsy one, at writing 
English ; and, ere long, Hume, Robert- 
son, Smith, and a whole host of follow- 
ers, attracted hither the eyes of all 
Europe. And yet in this brilliant re- 
suscitation of our " fervid genius," there 
was nothing truly Scottish, nothing in- 
digenous; except, perhaps, the natural 
impetuosity of intellect, which we some- 
times claim, and are sometimes upbraid- 
ed with, as a characteristic of onr nation. 
It is curious to remark that Scotland, so 
full of writers, had no Scottish culture, 



Life of Burns. 131 

iior indeed any English ; our culture 
was almost exclusively French. It was 
by studying Racine and Yoltaire, Bat- 
teux and Boileau, that Kames had 
trained himself to be a critic and phil- 
osopher: it was the light of Montes- 
quieu and Mably that guided Robertson 
in his political speculations : Quesnay's 
lamp that kindled the lamp of Adam 
Smith. Hume was too rich a man to 
borrow ; and perhaps he reached on the 
French more than he was acted on by 
them : but neither had he aught to do 
with Scotland ; Edinburgh, equally with 
La Fleche, was but the lodging and 
laboratory, in which he not so much 
morally Uved^ as metaphysically inves- 
tigated. ISTever, perhaps, was there a 
class of writers, so clear and well-or- 
dered, yet so totally destitute, to all 
appearance, of any patriotic affection, 
nay, of any human affection whatever. 
The French wits of the period were as 



132 Life of Burns. 

unpatriotic; but their general defici- 
ency in moral principle, not to say tlieir 
avowed sensuality and unbelief in all 
virtue, strictly so called, render tliis 
accountable enough. We hope there is 
a patriotism founded on something bet- 
ter than prejudice ; that our country 
may be dear to us, without injury to 
our philosophy ; that in loving and 
justly prizing all other lands, we may 
prize justly, and yet love before all 
others, our own stern Mothei-land, and 
the venerable structure of social and 
moral Life, which Mind has through 
long ages been building up for us there. 
Surely there is nourishment for the bet- 
ter part of man's heart in all this : surely 
the roots, that have fixed themselves in 
the very core of man's being, may be so 
cultivated as to grow up not into briers, 
but into roses, in the field of his life! 
Our Scottish sages have no such pro- 
pensities: the field of their life shows 



Life of Burns. 133 

neither briers nor roses ; but only a flat, 
continuous tlirasliing-floor for Logic, 
whereon all questions, from the " Doc- 
trine of Eent," to the " l^atural History 
of Religion," are thrashed and sifted 
with the same mechanical impartiality ! 
With Sir Walter Scott at the head of 
our literature, it cannot be denied that 
much of this evil is past, or rapidly 
passing away : our chief literary men, 
whatever other faults they may have, 
no longer live among us like a French 
Colony, or some knot of Propaganda 
Missionaries ; but like natural-born sub- 
jects of the soil, partaking and sympa- 
thizing in all our attachments, humors, 
and habits. Our literature no longer 
grows in water, but in mould, and with 
the true racy virtues of the soil and cli- 
mate. How much of this change may 
be due to Burns, or to any other indi- 
vidual, it might be difiicult to estimate. 
Direct literary imitation of Burns was 



134 



Life of Burns, 



not to be looked for. But his example, 
in the fearless adoption of domestic sub- 
jects, could not but operate from afar; 
and certainly in no heart did the love 
of country ever burn with a warmer 
glow than in that of Burns : " a tide of 
Scottish prejudice," as he modestly calls 
this deep and generous feeling, "had 
been poured along his veins ; and he 
felt that it would boil there till the flood- 
gates shut in eternal rest." It seemed 
to him, as if lie could do so little for his 
country, and yet would so gladly have 
done all. One small province stood 
open for him ; that of Scottish song, and 
liow eagerly he entered on it ; how de- 
votedly he labored there ! In his most 
toilsome journeyings, this object never 
quits him ; it is the little happy-valley 
of his careworn heart. In the gloom 
of his own affliction, he eagerly searches 
after some lonely brother of the muse, 
and rejoices to snatch one other name 



Life of Bums. 135 

from the oblivion that was covering it ! 
These were early feelings, and they 
abode with him to the end. 



-a wish, (I mind its power,) 



A wish, that to my latest hour 
Will strongly heave my breast; 
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book could make, 
Or sing a sang at least. 
The rough bur Thistle spreading wide 

Am-ang the bearded bear, 
I turn'd my weeding-clips aside. 

And spared the symbol dear. 

But to leave the mere literary charac- 
ter of Burns, which has already detained 
us too long, we cannot but think that the 
Life he willed, and was fated to lead 
among his fellow-men, is both more in- 
teresting and instructive than any of 
his written works. Tliese Poems are 
but like little rhymed fragments scat- 
tered here and there in the grand un- 
rhymed Romance of his eartlily exist- 
ence ; and it is only when intercalated in 



136 Life of Burns. 

this at their proper places, that they attain 
their full measure of significance. And 
this too, alas, was but a fragment ! The 
plan of a mighty edifice had been sketch- 
ed ; some columns, porticoes, firm masses 
of building, stand completed; the rest 
more or less clearly indicated; with 
many a far-stretching tendency, which 
only studious and friendly eyes can now 
trace towards the purposed termination. 
For the work is broken oif in the middle, 
almost in the beginning ; and rises among 
us, beautiful and sad, at once unfinished 
and a ruin ! If charitable j udgment was 
necessary in estimating his poems, and 
justice required that the aim and the 
manifest power to fulfil it must often be 
accepted for the fulfilment ; much more 
is this the case in regard to his life, the 
sum and result of all his endeavors, 
where his difficulties came upon him not 
in detail only, but in mass ; and so much 



Life of Burns. 137 

has been left unaccomplished, nay, was 
mistaken, and altogether marred. 

Properly speaking, there is but one 
era in the life of Burns, and that the 
earliest. We have not youth and man- 
hood ; but only youth : for, to the end, 
we discern no decisive change in the 
complexion of his character; in his 
thirty-seventh year, he is still, as it were, 
in youth. With all that resoluteness of 
judgment, that penetrating insight, and 
singular maturity of intellectual power, 
exhibited in his writings, he never at- 
tains to any clearness regarding himself; 
to the last he never ascertains his pecu- 
liar aim, even with such distinctness as 
is common among ordinary men ; and 
therefore never can pursue it with that 
singleness of will, which insures success 
and some contentment to such men. To 
the last, he wavers between two purposes : 
glorying in his talent, like a true poet, 
he yet cannot consent to make this his 



138 Life of Burns. 

chief and sole glory, and to follow it as 
the one thing needful, through poverty 
or riches, through good or evil report. 
Another far meaner ambition still cleaves 
to him ; he must dream and struggle 
about a certain "Rock of Independ- 
ence ;" which, natural and even admira- 
ble as it might be, was still but a warring 
with the world, on the comparitively 
insignificant ground of his being more 
or less completely supplied with money, 
than others ; of his standing at a higher, 
or at a lower altitude in general estima- 
tion, than others. For the world still 
appears to him, as to the young, in bor- 
rowed colors ; he expects from it what 
it cannot give to any man ; seeks for con- 
tentment, not within himself, in action 
and wise effort, but from without, in the 
kindness of circumstances, in love, friend- 
ship, honor, pecuniary ease. He would 
be happy, not actively and in himself, 
but passively, and from some ideal cor- 



Life of Burns. 139 

nucopia of Enjoyments, not earned by 
his own labor, but showered on him by 
the beneficence of Destiny. Thus, like 
a young man, he cannot steady himself 
for any fixed or systematic pursuit, but 
swerves to and fro, between passionate 
hope, and remorseful disappointment: 
rushing onwards with a deep tempestuous 
force, he surmounts or breaks asunder 
many a barrier ; travels, nay, advances 
far, but advancing only under uncertain 
guidance, is ever and anon turned from 
his path : and to the last, cannot reach 
the only true happiness , of a man, that 
of clear, decided Activity in the sphere 
for which by nature and circumstances 
he has been fitted and appointed. 

We do not say these things in dispraise 
of Burns : nay, perhaps, they but inter- 
est us the more in his favor. This bless- 
ing is not given soonest to the best ; but 
rather, it is often the greatest minds that 
are latest in obtaining it ; for where most 



140 Life of Burns. 

is to be developed, most time may be 
required to develope it. A complex con- 
dition had been assigned him from with- 
out, as complex a condition from within : 
no "pre-established harmony" existed 
between the clay soil of Mossgiel and 
the empyrean soul of Kobert Burns ; it 
was not wonderful, therefore, that the 
adjustment between them should have 
been long postponed, and his arm long 
cumbered, and his sight confused, in so 
vast and discordant an economy, as he 
had been appointed steward over. Byron 
was, at his death, but a year younger 
than Burns ; and through life, as it might 
have appeared, far more simply situated ; 
yet in him, too, we can trace no such ad- 
justment, no such moral manhood; but 
at best, and only a little before his end, 
the beginning of what seemed such. 

By much the most striking incident 
in Burns's Life is his journey to Edin- 
burgh ; but perhaps a still more impor- 



Life of Btirns. 141 

tant one is his residence at Irvine, so 
early as in his twenty-third year. Hith- 
erto his hfe had been poor and toilworn ; 
but otherwise not ungenial, and, with all 
its distresses, by no means unhappy. In 
his parentage, deducting outward cir- 
cumstances, he had every reason to 
reckon himself fortunate : his father was 
a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest 
character, as the best of our peasants 
are; valuing knowledge, possessing 
some, and, what is far better and rarer, 
open-minded for more; a man with a 
keen insight, and devout heart ; reverent 
towards God, friendly therefore at once, 
and fearless towards all that God has 
made ; in one word, though but a hard- 
handed peasant, a complete and fully 
unfolded Man. Such a father is seldom 
found in any rank in society ; and was 
worth descending far in society to seek. 
Unfortunately, he was very poor ; had 
he been even a little richer, almost ever 



142 Life of Burns, 

so little, the whole might have issued 
far otherwise. Mighty events turn on a 
straw ; the crossing of a brook decides 
the conquest of the world. Had this 
William Burns's small seven acres of 
nursery ground anywise prospered, the 
boy Robert had been sent to school ; had 
struggled forward, as so many weaker 
men do, to some university ; come forth 
not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular 
well-trained intellectual workman, and 
changed the whole course of British Lit- 
erature, — for it lay in him to have done 
this ! But the nursery did not prosper ; 
poverty sank his whole family below the 
help of even our cheap school-system: 
Burns remained a hard-worked plough- 
boy, and British literature took its own 
course. ^Nevertheless, even in this rug- 
ged scene, there is much to nourish him. 
If he drudges, it is with his brother, and 
for his father and mother, whom he 
loves, and would fain shield from want. 



Life of Burns. 143 

Wisdom is not banished from their poor 
hearth, nor the bahn of natural feeling : 
the solemn words, Let its loorship God^ 
are heard there from a " priest-like 
father;" if threatenings of unjust men 
throw mother and children into tears, 
these are tears not of grief only, but of 
holiest affection ; every heart in that 
humble group feels itself the closer knit 
to every other ; in their hard warfare 
they are there together, a " little band 
of brethren." Neither are such tears, 
and the deep beauty that dwells in them, 
their only portion. Light visits the 
liearts as it does the eyes of all living : 
there is a force, too, in this youth, that 
enables him to trample on misfortune ; 
nay, to bind it under his feet to make 
him sport. For a bold, warm, buoyant 
liumor of character has been given hini; 
and so the tliick-coming shapes of evil 
are welcomed with a gay, friendly irony, 
and in their closest pressure he bates no 



144: Life of Burns. 

jot of heart or hope. Yague yearnings 
of ambition fail not, as he grows up ; 
dreamy fancies hang like cloud-cities 
around him ; the curtain of Existence is 
slowly rising, in many-colored splen- 
dor and gloom : and the auroral light 
of first love is gilding his horizon, and 
the music of song is on his path ; and so 
he walks 

" in glory and in jor, 



Behind his plough, upon the mountain side !" 

We know, from the best evidence, that 
up to this date, Burns was happy ; nay, 
that he was the gayest, brightest, most 
fantastic, fascinating being to be found 
in the world ; more so even than he ever 
afterwards appeared. But now at this 
early age, he quits the paternal roof; 
goes forth into looser, louder, more excit- 
ing society; and becomes initiated in 
those dissipations, those vices, which a 
certain class of philosophers have assert- 



Life of Bairns. - 145 

ed to be a natural preparative for enter- 
ing on active life ; a kind of mud-bath, 
in which the youth is, as it were, neces- 
sitated to steep, and, w^e suppose, cleanse 
liimself, before the real toga of Manliood 
can be laid on him. We shall not dis- 
pute much with this class of philoso- 
phers ; we hope they are mistaken ; for 
Sin and Ee morse so easily beset us at all 
stages of life, and are always such indif- 
ferent company, that it seems hard we 
should, at any stage, be forced and fated 
not only to meet, but to yield to them ; 
and even serve for a term in their lep- 
rous armada. AYe hope it is not so. 
Clear we are, at all events, it cannot be 
the training one receives in this service, 
but only our determining to desert from 
it, that fits for true manly Action. We 
become men, not after we have been dis- 
sipated, and disappointed in the chase 
of false pleasure ; but after we have as- 
certained, in any way, what impassable 
10 



146 Life of Burns, 

barriers hem us in through tliis life ; how 
mad it is to hope for contentment to our 
infinite soul from the gifts of this ex- 
tremely finite world ! that a man must 
be sufficient for himself ; and that "for 
suffering and enduring there is no rem- 
edy but striving and doing." Manhood 
begins when w^e have in any w^ay made 
truce with E'ecessity; begins, at all 
events, when we have surrendered to ITe- 
cessity, as the most part only do ; but be- 
gins joyfully and hopefully only when we 
have reconciled ourselves to Eecessit}^ ; 
and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, 
and felt that in ]N"ecessity we are free. 
Surely, such lessons as this last, which, 
in one shape or other, is the grand lesson 
for every mortal man, are better learned 
from the lips of a devout mother, in the 
looks and actions of a devout father, 
while the heart is yet soft and pliant, 
than in collision with the sharp adamant 
of Fate, attracting us to shipwreck us, 



Life of Burns. 147 

when the heart is grown hard, and ma}^ 
be broken before it will become contrite ! 
Had Burns continued to learn this, as he 
was already learning it, in his father's 
cottage, he would have learned it fully, 
which he never did, — and been saved 
many a lasting aberration, many a bitter 
hour and year of remorseful sorrow. 

It seems to us another circumstance 
of fatal import in Burns's history, that 
at this time too he became involved in 
the religious quarrels of his district ; that 
he was enlisted and feasted, as the fight- 
ing man of the ]N"ew-Light Priesthood, 
in their highly unprofitable warfare. 
At the tables of these free-minded clergy, 
he learned much more than was needful 
for him. Such liberal ridicule of fanat- 
icism awakened in his mind scruples 
about Religion itself; and a whole world 
of Doubts, which it required quite an- 
other set of conjurors than these men 
to exorcise. We do not say that such 



148 Life of Burns. 

an intellect as his could have escaped 
similar doubts, at some period of his his- 
tory ; or even that he could, at a later 
period, have come through them alto- 
gether victorious and unharmed : but it 
seems peculiarly unfortunate that this 
time, above all others, should have been 
fixed for the encounter. For now, with 
principles assailed by evil example from 
without, by " passions raging like de- 
mons" from within, he had little need 
of skeptical misgivings to whisper trea- 
son in \}L\<d heat of the battle, or to cut 
off his retreat if he were already defeated. 
He loses his feeling of innocence; his 
mind is at variance with itself; the old di- 
vinity no longer presides there ; but wild 
Desires and wild Repentance alternately 
oppress him. Ere long, too, he has com- 
mitted himself before the world; his 
character for sobriety, dear to a Scottish 
peasant, as few corrupted worldings can 
even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes 



Life of Burns. U9 



of men ; and his only refuge consists in 
trying to disbelieve liis guiltiness, and is 
but a refuge of lies. The blackest des- 
peration now gathers over him, broken 
only by the red lightnings of remorse. 
The whole fabric of his life is blasted 
asunder ; for now not only his character, 
but his personal liberty, is to be lost; 
men and Fortime are leagued for his 
hurt; "hungry Euin has him in the 
wind." He sees no escape but the sad- 
dest of all : exile from his loved country, 
to a country in every sense inhospitable 
and abhorrent to him. "While the 
"gloomy night is gathering fast," in 
mental storm and solitude, as well as in 
physical he sings his wild farewell to 
Scotland : 

"Fare^yell, my friends, farewell my foes! 
My peace with these, my love with those : 
The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
Adieu, my native banks of Ayr !" 

Light breaks suddenly in on him in 



150 Life of Biorns. 

floods ; but still a false transitory light, 
and no real sunshine. He is invited to 
Edinburgh ; hastens thither with antici- 
pating heart ; is welcomed as in triumph, 
and with universal blandishment and 
acclamation ; whatever is wisest, what- 
ever is greatest, or loveliest there, gath- 
ers round him, to gaze on his face, to 
show him honor, sympathy, affection. 
Burns's appearance among the sages 
and nobles of Edinburgh, must be re- 
garded as one of the most singular phe- 
nomena in modern Literature; almost 
like the appearance of some ^Napoleon 
amono^ the crowned sovereifi^ns of mod- 
ern Politics. For it is nowise as a 
"mockery king," set there by favor, 
transiently, and for a purpose, that he 
will let himself be treated ; still less is 
he a mad Rienzi, whose sudden eleva- 
tion turns his too weak head ; but he 
stands there oh his own basis ; cool, un- 
astonished, holding his equal rank from 



Life of Burns. 151 

IS^atiire herself; putting forth no claim 
which there is not strength in him, as 
well as about him, to vindicate. Mr. 
Lockhart has some forcible observations 
on this point : 

'' It needs no effort of imagination," 
says he, " to conceive what the sensa- 
tions of an isolated set of scholars 
(almost all either clergymen or profes- 
sors) must have been, in the presence 
of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny 
stranger, with his great flashing eyes, 
who, having forced his way among 
them from the plough-tail, at a single 
stride, manifested in the whole strain of 
his bearing and conversation, a most 
thorough conviction, that in the society 
of the most eminent men of his nation, 
he was exactly where he was entitled to 
be ; hardly deigned to flatter them by 
exhibiting even an occasional symptom 
of being flattered by their notice ; by 
turns calmly measured himself against 



152 Life of Burns. 

the most cultivated understandings of 
liis time in discussion ; overpowered the 
hon mots of the most celebrated con- 
vivialists by broad floods of merriment, 
impregnated with all the burning life 
of genius ; astounded bosoms habitually 
enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of 
social reserve, by compelling them to 
tremble, — nay, to tremble visibly, — be- 
neath the fearless touch of natural 
pathos ; and all this without indicating 
the smallest willingness to be ranked 
among those professional ministers of 
excitement, who are content to be paid 
in money and smiles for doing what 
the spectators and auditors would be 
ashamed of doing in their own j^ersons, 
even if they had the power of doing it ; 
and last, and probably worst of all, who 
was known to be in the habit of en- 
livening societies which they would 
have scorned to approach, still more 
frequently than their own, with elo- 



Life of Biirns. 153 

quence no less magnificent; with wit, 
in all likelihood still more daring ; often 
enough as the superiors whom he front- 
ed without alarm might have guessed 
from the beginning, and had, ere long, 
no occasion to guess, with wit pointed 
at themselves." 

The farther we remove from this 
scene, the more singular will it seem to 
us : details of the exterior aspect of it 
are already full of interest. Most read- 
ers recollect Mr. Walker's personal in- 
terviews with Burns as among the best 
passages of his ]^arrative ; a time will 
come when this reminiscence of Sir 
Walter Scott's, slight though it is, will 
also be precious. 

"As for Burns/' writes Sir Yv^alter, 
" I may truly say Yergilium vidi tantiom. 
I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when 
he came first to Edinburgh, but had 
sense and feeling enough to be much 
interested in his poetry, and would have 



154 Life of Burns. 

given the world to know liim : but I 
had very little acquaintance with any 
literary people ; and still less with the 
gentry of the west country, the two sets 
that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas 
Grierson was at that time a clerk of my 
father's. He knew Burns, and promised 
to ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but 
had no opportunity to keep his word ; 
otherwise I might have seen more of 
this distinguished man. As it was, I 
saw him one day at the late venerable 
Professor Ferguson's, wliere there were 
several gentlemen of literary reputation, 
amonc: whom I remember the celebrated 
Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we 
youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. 
The only thing I remember, which was 
remarkable in Burns's manner, was the 
effect produced upon him by a print of 
Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying 
dead on the snow, his dog sitting in mis- 
ery on one side, — on the other, his 



Life of Burns. 155 

widow, with a child in her arms. These 
lines were written beneath : 

" Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain : 
. Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew 
Gave the sad presage of his future years. 
The child of misery baptized in tears." 

"Burns seemed much affected by the 
print, or rather by the ideas which it 
suggested to his mind. He actually 
shed tears. He asked whose the lines 
were, and it chanced that nobody but 
myself remembered that they occur in a 
half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, call- 
ed by the unpromising title of "The 
Justice of Peace." I whispered my in- 
formation to a friend i3resent, he men- 
tioned it to Burns, who rewarded me 
with a look and a word, which, though 
of mere civility, I then received and 
still recollect with very great pleasure. 

"His person was strong and robust; 



156 ^^^f^ of Burns. 

his manners rustic, not clownisli ; a sort 
of dignified plainness and simplicity, 
wliicli received part of its effect perhaps 
from one's knowledge of his extraordin- 
ary talents. His features are represent- 
ed in Mr. Nasmyth's picture : but to 
me it conveys the idea that they are 
diminished, as if seen in perspective. I 
think his countenance was more massive 
than it looks in any of the portraits. I 
should have taken the poet, had I not 
known what he was, for a very sagacious 
country farmer of the old Scotch school, 
i. e. none of your modern agriculturists 
who keep laborers for their drudgeiy, 
but the douce gudeman who lield liis 
own plough. There w^as a strong ex- 
pression of sense and shrewdness in all 
his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, 
indicated the poetical character and 
temperament. It was large, and of a 
dark cast, which glowed (I say literally 
glowed) when he spoke with feeling or 



Life of Burns. 157 

interest. I never saw such another eye 
in a human head, though I have seen 
the most distinguished men of my time. 
His conversation expressed perfect self- 
confidence, without the slightest pre- 
sumption. Among the men who were 
the most learned of their time and 
country, he expressed himself with per- 
fect firmness, but without the least in- 
trusive forwardness ; and when he dif- 
fered in opinion, he did not hesitate to 
express it firmly, yet at the same time 
with modesty. I do not remember any 
part of his conversation distinctly 
enough to be quoted ; nor did I ever 
see him again, except in the street, 
where he did not recognize me, as I 
could not expect he should. He was 
much caressed in Edinburgh : but (con- 
sidering what literary emoluments have 
been since his day) the efforts made for 
his relief were extremely trifling. 

" I remember, on this occasion, I men- 



158 Life of Burns. 

tion, I thought Burn-s's acquaintance 
with English poetry was rather limited; 
and also, that having twenty times the 
abilities of Allan Eamsay and of Fer- 
guson, he talked of them with too much 
humility as his models : there w^as doubt- 
less national predilection in his estimate. 
"This is all I can tell j^ou about 
Burns. I have only to add, that his 
dress corresponded with his manner. 
He was like a farmer dressed in his best 
to dine with the laird. I do not speak 
in malam jpartem^ when I say, I never 
saw a man in company with his superi- 
ors in station or information more per- 
fectly free from either the reality or the 
affectation of embarrassment. I was 
told, but did not observe it, that his 
address to females was extremely defer- 
ential, and always with a turn either to 
the pathetic or humorous, wdiich engaged 
their attention particularly. I have 
heard the late Duchess of Gordon re- 



Life of Burns. 159 

mark this. I do not know any tiling 
I can add to these recollections of forty 
years since." 

The conduct of Burns under this daz- 
zling blaze of favor; the calm, unaf- 
fected, manly manner, in which he not 
only bore it, but estimated its value, has 
justly been regarded as the best proof 
that could be given of his real vigor and 
integrity of mind. A little natural vanity, 
some touches of hypocritical modesty, 
some glimmerings of affectation, at least 
some fear of being thought affected, w^e 
could have pardoned in almost any man ; 
but no such indication is to be traced 
here. In his unexampled situation the 
young peasant is not a moment per- 
plexed ; so many strange lights do not 
confuse him, do not lead him astray. 
iSTevertheless, we cannot but perceive 
that this winter did him great and last- 
ing injury. A somewhat clearer knowl- 
edge of men's affairs, scarcely of their 



160 Life of Burns. 

characters, it did afford liim : but a 
sharper feeling of Fortune's unequal ar- 
rangements in their social destiny it also 
left with him. He had seen the gay 
and gorgeous arena, in which the power- 
ful are born to play their parts ; nay, 
had himself stood in the midst of it ; 
and he felt more bitterly than ever, that 
here he was but a looker-on, and had 
no part or lot in tliat splendid game. 
From this time a jealous, indignant fear 
of social degradation takes possession of 
him ; and perverts, so far as aught could 
pervert, his private contentment, and 
his feelings towards his richer fellows. 
It was clear enough to Burns that he 
had talent enough to make a foi'tune, or 
a hundred fortunes, could he but have 
rightly willed this ; it was clear also that 
he willed something far different, and 
therefore could not make one. Unhappy 
it was that he had not power to choose 
the one, and reject the other; but must 



Life of Burns. 161 

halt forever between two opinions, two 
objects ; making liam]3ered advancement 
towards either. But so is it with many 
men : we " long for the merchandise, 
yet wonld fain keep the price ;" and so 
stand chaffering with Fate in vexatious 
altercation, till the IS'ight come, and our 
fair is over ! 

The Edinburgh learned of that period 
were in general more noted for clearness 
of head than for warmth of heart : with 
the exception of the good old Blacklock, 
wdiose help was too ineffectual, scarcely 
one among them seems to have looked 
at Burns with any true sympathy, or in- 
deed much otherwise than as at a highly 
curious thing. By the great, also, he is 
treated in the customary fashion ; enter- 
tained at their tables, and dismissed: 
certain modica of pudding and praise 
are, from time to time, gladly exchanged 
for the fascination of his presence ; which 
exchange once effected, the bargain is 
11 



162 Life of Burns. 

finished, and each party goes his several 
way. At the end of this strange sea- 
son, Burns gloomily snms up his gains 
and losses, and meditates on the chaotic 
future. In money he is somewhat rich- 
er ; in fame and the show of happiness, 
infinitely richer; but in the substance 
of it, as poor as ever. ISTay, poorer, for 
his heart is now maddened still more 
with the fever of mere worldly Ambi- 
tion : and through long years the disease 
will rack him with unprofitable sufi'er- 
ings, and weaken his strength for all 
true and nobler aims. 

Wliat Burns was next to do or avoid ; 
how a man so circumstanced was now 
to guide himself towards his true advan- 
tage, might at this point of time have 
been a question for the wisest: and it 
w^as a question wdiicli he was left alto- 
gether to answer for himself: of his 
learned or rich patrons it had not struck 
any individual to turn a thought on this 



Life of Burns. 163 

so trivial matter. Witliont claiming for 
Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we 
must say, that his Excise and Farm 
scheme does not seem to ns a very un- 
reasonable one; and that we should be 
at a loss, even now, to suggest one de- 
cidedly better. Some of his admirers, 
indeed, are scandalized at his ever re- 
solving to gauge / and Tvould have had 
him apparently lie still at the pool, till 
the spirit of Patronage should stir the 
waters, and then heal with one plunge 
all his worldly sorrows ! We fear such 
counsellors knew but little of Burns; 
and did not consider that happiness 
might in all cases be cheaply had by 
waiting for the fulfilment of golden 
dreams, were it not that in the interim 
the dreamer must die of huno^er. It re- 
fleets credit on the manliness and sound 
sense of Burns, that he felt so early on 
what ground he was standing ; and pre- 
ferred self-help, on the humblest scale, 



164: Life of Biii^ns. 

to dependence and inaction, though 
with hope of far more splendid possibil- 
ities. But even these possibilities were 
not rejected in his scheme : he might 
expect, if it chanced that he had any 
friend, to rise, in no long period, into 
something even like opulence and leis- 
ure ; while again, if it chanced that he 
had no friend, he could still live in 
security ; and for the rest, he " did not 
intend to borrow honor from any pro- 
fession." We think, then, tliat his plan 
was honest and well calculated: all 
turned on the execution of it. Doubt- 
less it foiled ; yet not, we believe, from 
any vice inherent in itself. Nay, after 
all, it was no failure of external means, 
but of interna], that overtook Burns. 
His was no bankruptcy of the purse, but 
of the soul ; to his last day, he owed no 
man any thing. 

Meanwhile he begins well ; with two 
good and wise actions. His donation 



Life of ^nr7is. 165 

to liis mother, munificent from a man 
whose income had lately been seven 
pounds ayear, was worthy of him, and 
not more than worthy. Generous also, 
and worthy of him, was his treatment 
of the woman whose life's welfare now 
depended on his pleasure. A friendly 
observer might have hoped serene days 
for him : his mind is on the true road to 
peace with itself : what clearness he still 
wants will be given as he proceeds ; for 
the best teacher of duties, that still lie 
dim to us, is the Practice of those we 
see, and have at hand. Had the " pat- 
rons of genius," who could give him 
nothing, but taken nothing from him, at 
least nothing more ! — the wounds of his 
heart would have healed, vulgar ambi- 
tion would have died away. Toil and 
Frugality w^ould have been welcome, 
since Virtue dwelt with them, and poet- 
ry would liave shone through them as 
of old ; and in her clear ethereal light, 



-u 



166 



Life of Bums. 



wliich was his own by birth-riglit, lie 
might liave looked clown on his earthly 
destiny, and all its obstructions, not with 
patience only, but with love. 

But the patrons of genius would not 
have it so. Picturesque tourists,"^ all 
manner of fashionable danglers after 
literature, and, far worse, all manner of 
convivial Mecsenases, hovered round 
him in his retreat ; and his good as well 



« There is one little sketch by certain " English gentlemen" 
of this class, which, though adojited in Currie's Narrative, 
and since then repeated in most others, we have all along felt 
an invincible disposition to regard as imaginary : " On a rock 
that projected into the stream they saw a man emjjloyed in 
angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of 
fox-skin on his head, a loose great-coat fixed round him by a 
belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broad- 
sword. It was Burns." Now, we rather think, it was not 
Burns. For, to say nothing of the fox-skin cap, loose and 
quite Hibernian watch-coat with the belt, what are we to make 
of this "enormous Highland broad-sword" depending from 
him? More especially, as there is no word of parish consta- 
bles on the outlook to see whether, as Dennis phrases it, he 
had an eye to his own midriff, or that of the public ! Burns, 
of all men, had the least tendency to seek for distinction, 
either in his own eyes, or those of others, by such poor mum- 
meries. 



Life of Burns. 167 

as his weak qualities secured them in- 
lliience over him. He was flattered by 
fheir notice ; and his warm social nature 
made it impossible for him to shake them 
off, and hold on his way apart from them. 
These men, as we believe, were proxi- 
mately the means of his ruin. Not that 
rhey meant him any ill ; they only meant 
themselves a little good ; if he suffered 
harm, let liiin look to it ! But they 
wasted his precious time and his pre- 
cious talent; they disturbed his compos- 
ure, broke down his returning liabits of 
temperance and assiduous contented ex- 
ertion. Their pampering was baneful 
to him ; their cruelty, which soon follow- 
ed, was equally baneful. The old grudge 
against Fortune's inequality awoke with 
new bitterness in their neighborhood, 
and Burns had no retreat but to the 
" Kock of Independence," which is but 
an air-castle, after all, that looks well 
at a distance, but will screen no one 



168 Life of Burns. 

from real wind and wet. Flushed with 
irregular excitement, exasperated alter- 
nately by contempt of others, and con- 
tempt of himself. Burns was no longer 
regaining his peace of mind, but fast 
losing it forever. There was a hollow- 
ness at the heart of his life, for his con- 
science did not now approve what he 
w^as doing. 

Amid the vapors of unwise enjoy- 
ment, of bootless remorse, and angry 
discontent w^itli Fate, his true loadstar, 
a life of Poetry, with Poverty, nay, with 
Famine if it must be so, was too often 
altogether hidden from his eyes. And 
yet he sailed a sea, where, without some 
such guide, there was no right steering. 
Meteors of French Politics rise before 
him, but these were not his stars. An 
accident this, which hastened, but did 
not originate, his worst distresses. In 
the mad contentions of that time, he 
comes in collision with certain official 



Life of Burns. 169 

Superiors ; is wounded bj tliem ; cruelly 
lacerated, we should say, could a dead 
mechanical implement, in any case, be 
called cruel : and shrinks, in indignant 
pain, into deeper self-seclusion, into 
gloomier moodiness than ever. His life 
has now lost its nnity : it is a life of 
fragments ; led with little aim, beyond 
the melancholy one of securing its own 
continuance — in fits of wild false joy, 
wdien such offered, and of black despon- 
dency when they passed away. His 
character before the world begins to suf- 
fer : calumny is busy with him ; for a 
miserable man makes more enemies 
than friends. Some faults he has fallen 
into, and a thousand misfortunes ; but 
deep criminality is wdiat he stands ac- 
cused of, and they that are not without 
sin, cast the first stone at him ! For is 
he not a w^ell- wisher of the French Rev- 
olution, a Jacobin, and therefore in that 
one act guilty of all? These accusa- 



170 Life of Bu7'7is. 

tions, j^olitical and moral, it has since 
appeared, were ftilse enough ; but the 
world hesitated little to credit them. 
JN^ay, his convivial Mecsenases them- 
selves were not the last to do it. There 
is reason to believe that, in his later 
j^ears, the Dumfries Aristocracy had 
partly withdrawn themselves from 
Burns, as from a tainted person, no 
longer worthy of their acquaintance. 
That painful class, stationed, in all pro- 
vincial cities, behind the outmost breast- 
work of Gentility, there to stand siege 
and do battle against the intrusion of 
Grocerdom, and Grazierdom, had actual- 
ly seen dishonor in the society of Burns, 
and branded him with their veto ; had, as 
we vulgarly say, cut him ! We find one 
passage in this work of Mr. Lockhart's, 
which will not out of our thoughts : 

'' A gentleman of that country, whose 
name I have already more than once 
had occasion to refer to, has often told 



Life of Burns. 171 

me that lie was seldom more grieved, 
than when, riding into Dumfries one 
fine summer evening about this time to 
attend a country ball, he saw Burns 
walking alone, on the shadj side of the 
principal street of the town, while the 
opposite side was gay with successive 
groups of gentlemen and ladies, all 
drawn together for the festivities of the 
night, not one of whom appeared will- 
ino: to reco2:nize him. The horseman 
dismounted, and joined Burns, who, on 
his proposing to cross the street, said : 
'Kay, nay, my young friend, that's all 
over now ;' and quoted, after a pause, 
some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's 
pathetic ballad : 

' His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
His auld ane looked better than mony ane's new ; 
But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hiug, 
And casts himsell dowie upon the corn-biug. 

* were we young, as we ance hae been, 
We sud hae been galloping down on von green, 



172 Life of Burns. 

And linking it ower the lily-white lea ! 

And xvereiiamy heart light Ixoaddie.^ 

It was little in Buriis's character to let 
his feelings on certain subjects escape in 
this fashion. He, immediately after re- 
citing these verses, assumed the spright- 
liness of his most pleasing manner ; and, 
taking his young friend home with him, 
entertained him very agreeably till 
the hour of the ball arrived." 

Alas ! when w^e think that Burns now 
sleeps " where bitter indignation can no 
longer lacerate his heart,"* and that 
most of these fair dames and frizzled 
gentlemen already lie at his side, where 
the breastwork of gentility is quite 
thrown down, — who would not sigh over 
the thin delusions and foolish toys that 
divide heart from heart, and make man 
unmerciful to his brother ! 

It was not now to be hoped that the 

* VM smva indignatio cor lilterius lacerare neqidt. — 
Swift's Epitaph. 



Life of Burns. 173 

genius of Burns would ever reach ma- 
turity, or accomplish ought worthy of 
itself. His spirit was jarred in its mel- 
ody ; not the soft breath of natural feel- 
ing, but the rude hand of Fate, was now 
sweeping over the strings. And 3^et 
what harmony was in him, wdiat music 
even in his discords ! How t"lie w^ild 
tones had a charm for the simplest and 
the wisest ; and all men felt and knew 
that here also was one of the Gifted ! 
" If he entered an inn at midnight, after 
all the inmates were in bed, the news of 
his arrival circulated from the cellar to 
the garret ; and ere ten minutes had 
elapsed, the landlord and all his guests 
w^ere assembled !" Some brief, pure mo- 
ments of poetic life were yet appointed 
him, in the composition of his Songs. 
We can understand how he grasped at 
this employment ; and how, too, he 
spurned at all other reward for it but 
what the labor itself brouo-ht him. For 



174 Life of Burns. 

the soul of Burns, though scathed and 
marred, was yet living in its full moral 
strength, though sliarply conscious of its 
errors and abasement : and here, in his 
destitution and degradation, was one act 
of seeming nobleness and self-devoted- 
ness left even for him to perform. He felt, 
too, that w^ith all the " thoughtless fol- 
lies" that had " laid him low," the world 
was unjust and cruel to him ; and he 
silently appealed to another and calmer 
time. Not as a hired soldier, but as a 
patriot, would he strive for the glory of 
his country ; so he cast from him the 
poor sixpence a-day, and served zealous- 
ly as a volunteer. Let us not grudge him 
this last luxury of his existence ; let him 
not have appealed to us in vain ! The 
money w^as not necessary to him ; he 
struggled through without it ; long since, 
these guineas would have been gone, and 
now the high-mindedness of refusing 



Life of Burns. 175 

them will plead for him in all hearts for 
ever. 

We are here arrived at the crisis of 
Burns's life ; for matters had now taken 
such a shape with him as conld not long 
continue. If improvement was not to 
be looked for, Nature could only for a 
limited time maintain this dark and 
maddening warfare against the world 
and itself. We are not medically in- 
formed whether any continuance of 
years was, at this period, probable for 
Burns ; whether his death is to be look- 
ed on as in some sense an accidental 
event, or only as the natural consequence 
of the long series of events that had 
preceded. The latter seems to be the 
likelier opinion ; and yet it is by no 
means a certain one. At all events, as 
we have said, some change could not be 
very distant. Three gates of deliver- 
ance, it seems to us, were open for 
Burns : clear poetical activity, madness. 



176 -^'(/^ of Burns. 

or death. The first, with longer life, 
was still possible, though not probable ; 
for physical causes were beginning to 
be concerned in it : and yet Burns had 
an iron resolution ; could he but have 
seen and felt, that not only his highest 
glory, but his first duty, and the true 
medicine for all his woes, lay here. 
The second was still less probable ; for 
his mind was ever among the clearest 
and firmest. So the milder third gate 
was opened, for him : and he passed, not 
softly, yet speedily, into that still coun- 
try, where the hail-storms and fire-show- 
ers do not reach, and the heaviest-laden 
wayfarer at length lays down his load ! 
Contemplating this sad end of Burns, 
and how he sank unaided by any real 
hel23, uncheered by any wise sympathy, 
generous minds have sometimes figured 
to themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, 
that much might have been done for 
him ; that by counsel, true afi'ection, and 



Life of Burns. 177 

friendly ministrations, he might have 
been saved to himself and the world. 
^ye question whether there is not more 
tenderness of heart than soundness of 
j udgment in these suggestions. It seems 
dubious to us whether the richest, wisest, 
most benevolent individual, could have 
lent Burns any effectual help. Counsel, 
which seldom profits any one, he did 
not need ; in his understanding, he knew 
the right from, the wrong, as well per- 
haps as any man ever did ; but the per- 
suasion, which would have availed him, 
lies not so much in the head, as in the 
heart, where no argument or expostula- 
tion could have assisted much to im- 
plant it. As to money again, we do not 
really believe that this was his essential 
want ; or well see how any private man 
could, even presupposing Burns's con- 
sent, have bestowed on him an inde- 
pendent fortune, with much prospect of 
decisive advantage. It is a mortifying 



178 Life of Biirns. 

truth, that two men in any rank of so- 
ciety could hardly be found virtuous 
enough to give money, and to take it, 
as a necessary gift, without injury to the 
moral entireness of one or both. But 
so stands the fact: friendship, in tlie 
old heroic sense of that term, no longer 
exists ; except in the cases of kindred or 
other legal affinity ; it is in reality no 
longer expected, or recognized as a virtue 
among men. A close observer of man- 
ners has pronounced " Patronage," that 
is, pecuniary or other economic further- 
ance, to be " twice cursed ;" cursing him 
that gives, and him that takes ! And 
thus, in regard to outward matters also, 
it has become the rule, as in regard to 
inward it always was and must be the 
rule, that no one shall look for effectual 
help to another; but that each shall rest 
contented with what help he can afford 
himself. Such, we say, is the principle 
of modern Honor; naturally enough 



L^f^ ^f Burns. 179 

o^rowins: out of that sentiment of Pride, 
wliicli we inculcate and encourage as 
tlie basis of our whole social morali- 
ty. Many a poet has been poorer than 
Burns; but no one was ever prouder: 
and we may question, whetlier, without 
great precautions, even a pension from 
Eoyalty would not have galled and en- 
cumbered, more than actually assisted 
him. 

Still less, therefore, are we disposed 
to join with another class of Burns's 
admirers, who accuse the higher ranks 
among us of having ruined Burns by 
their selfish neglect of him. We have 
already stated our doubts whether direct 
pecuniary help, had it been offered, 
would have been accepted, or could 
have proved very effectual. We shall 
readily admit, however, that much was 
to be done for Burns ; that many a poi- 
soned arrow might have been warded 
from his bosom ; many an entanglement 



180 Life of Burns. 

in his path cut asunder by the hand of 
the powerful ; and light and heat shed 
on him from high places, would have 
made his humble atmosphere more ge- 
nial ; and the softest heart then breath- 
ing" mifflit have lived and died with some 
fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant fur- 
ther, and for Burns it is granting much, 
that with all his pride, he would have 
thanked, even with exaggerated grati- 
tude, any one who had cordially be- 
friended him: patronage, unless once 
cursed, needed not to have been twice 
so. At all events, the poor promotion 
he desired in his calling might have 
been granted : it was his own scheme, 
therefore likelier than any other to be 
of service. All this it might have been 
a luxury, nay, it was a duty, for our no- 
bility to have done. No part of all 
this, however, did any of them do ; or 
apparently attempt, or wish to do ; so 
much is granted against them. But 



Life of Btorns. 181 

what then is the amount of their blame ? 
Simply that they were men of the 
world, and walked by the principles of 
such men ; that they treated Burns, as 
other nobles and other commoners had 
done other poets ; as the English did 
Shakspeare ; as King Charles and his 
cavaliers did Butler, as King Philip and 
his Grandees did Cervantes. Do men 
gather grapes of thorns? or shall w^e 
cut down our thorns for yielding only a 
fence^ and haws ? How, indeed, could 
the " nobility and gentry of his native 
land" hold out any help to this " Scot- 
tish Bard, proud of his name and coun- 
try ?" Were the nobility and gentry so 
much as able rightly to help themselves ? 
Had they not their game to preserve ; 
their borough interests to strengthen ; 
dinners, therefore, of various kinds to 
eat and give ? Were their means more 
than adequate to all this business, or 
less than adequate 1 Less than adequate 



182 Life of Burns. 

in general : few of them in reality were 
richer than Burns ; many of them were 
poorer ; for sometimes they had to wring 
their snpplies, as with thnmbscrews, 
from the hard hand ; and, in their need 
of guineas, to forget their duty of mercy ; 
which Burns was never reduced to do. 
Let us pity and forgive them. The 
game they preserved and shot, the din- 
ners they ate and gave, the borough in- 
terests they strengthened, the little Baby- 
Ions they severally builded by the glory 
of their might, are all melted, or melt- 
ing back into the primeval Chaos, as 
man's merely selfish endeavors are fated 
to do : and here was an action extending, 
in virtue of its worldly influence, we 
may say, 'through all time ; in virtue of 
its moral nature, beyond all time, being 
immortal as the Spirit of Goodness itself; 
this action was offered them to do, and 
lio-ht was not given them to do it. Let 
us pity and forgive them. But, better 



Life of Burns. 183 

than pity, let ns go and do otherioise. Hu- 
man suffering did not end with the life of 
Bui'DS ; neither was the solemn mandate, 
" Love one another, bear one another's 
burdens," given to the rich only, but to 
all men. True, we shall find no Burns 
to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our 
pity : but celestial natures, groaning 
under the fardels of a wxary life, we 
shall still find ; and that wretchedness 
which Fate has rendered voiceless and 
tuneless^ is not the least wretched, but 
the most. 

Still we do not think that the blame 
of Burns's failure lies chiefly with the 
world. The w^orld, it seems to us, treat- 
ed him with more, rather than with less 
kindness, than it usually shows to such 
men. It has ever, w^e fear, shown but 
small favor to its Teachers ; hunger and 
nakedness, perils and reviling, the pris- 
on, the cross, the poison-chalice, have, 
in most times and countries, been the 



184 Life of Biirns. 

market-place it has offered for "Wisdom, 
the welcome with which it has greeted 
those who have come to enlighten and 
purify it. Homer and Socrates, and the 
Christian Apostles belong to old days ; 
but the world's Martyrology was not 
completed with these. Eoger Eacon 
and Galileo languish in priestly dun- 
geons, Tasso pines in the cell of a mad- 
house, Camoens dies begging on the 
streets of Lisbon. So neglected, so " 23er- 
secuted they the Prophets," not in Ju- 
dea only, but in all places wdiere men 
have been. We reckon that every poet 
of Burns's order is, or should be, a 
prophet and teacher to his age ; that he 
has no right therefore to expect great 
kindness from it, but rather is bound to 
do it great kindness ; that Burns, in 
particular, experienced fully the usual 
proportion of the world's goodness ; and 
that the blame of his failure, as we have 
said, lies not chiefly with the world. 



Life of Burns. 185 

Where then does it lie ? We are 
forced to answer: With himself ; it is 
his inward, not his outward misfortunes, 
that bring him to the dust. Seldom, 
indeed, is it otherwise ; seldom is a life 
morally wrecked, but the grand cause 
lies in some internal mal-arrangement, 
some want less of good fortune than of 
good guidance. ISTature fashions no 
creature without implanting in it the 
strength needful for its action and dura- 
tion ; least of all does she so neglect her 
masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul. 
N^either can we believe that it is in the 
power of any external circumstances 
utterly to ruin the mind of a man ; nay, 
if proper w^isdom be given him, even so 
much as to affect its essential health and 
beauty. The sternest sum-total of all 
worldly misfortunes is Death ; nothing 
more can lie in the cup of human wo : 
yet many men, in all ages, have tri- 
umphed over Death, and led it captive ; 



186 Life of Burns. 

converting its physical victory into a 
moral victory for themselves, into a seal 
and immortal consecration for all that 
their past life had achieved. "What has 
been done, may be done again ; nay, it 
is but the degree and not the kind of 
such heroism that differs in different 
seasons; for without some portion of 
this spirit, not of boisterous daring, but 
of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial, in 
all its forms, no good man, in any scene 
or time, has ever attained to be good. 

We have already stated the error of 
Burns ; and mourned over it, rather 
than blamed it. It was the want of 
unity in his purposes, of consistency in 
his aims ; the hapless attempt to mingle 
in friendly union the common sjDirit of 
the world with the spirit of poetry, 
which is of a far different and altogether 
irreconcilable nature. Burns was noth- 
ing wholly, and Burns could be noth- 
ing ; no man formed as he was can be 



Life of Burns. 187 



any thing, by halves. The heart, not 
of a mere hot-blooded, popular verse- 
monger, or poetical Restaurateur^ but 
of a true Poet and Singer, worthy of the 
old religious heroic times, had been 
given him : and he fell in an age, not 
of heroism and religion, but of skepti- 
cism, selfishness, and triviality, when 
true Nobleness was little understood, 
and its place supplied by a hollow, dis- 
social, altogether barren and unfruitful 
principle of Pride. The influences of 
that age, his open, kind, susceptible na- 
ture, to say nothing of his highly un- 
toward situation, made it more than 
usually difficult for him to repel or resist; 
the better spirit that was within him ever 
sternly demanded its rights, its supre- 
macy ; he spent his life in endeavoring 
to reconcile these two ; and lost it, as he 
must have lost it, without reconciling 
them here. 

Barns was born poor ; and born also 



188 Life of Burns. 

to continue poor, for he would not en- 
deavor to be otherwise : this it had been 
well could he have once for all admit- 
ted, and considered as finally settled. 
He was poor, truly ; but hundreds even 
of his own class and order of minds 
have been poorer, yet have suffered 
nothing deadly from it : nay; his own 
father had a far sorer battle with un- 
grateful destiny than his was ; and he 
did not yield to it, but died courageous- 
ly warring, and to all moral intents pre- 
vailing, against it. True, Burns had lit- 
tle means, had even little time for poet- 
ry, his only real pursuit and vocation ; 
but so much the more precious was 
what little he had. In all these exter- 
nal res^^ects his case was hard ; but very 
far from the hardest. Poverty, inces- 
sant drudgery, and much worse evils, it 
has often been the lot of poets and wise 
men to strive with, and their glory to 
conquer. Locke was banished as a trai- 



Life of Burns. 189 

tor ; and wrote his Essay on the Human 
Understanding., sheltering himself in a 
Dutch garret. Was Milton rich or at 
his ease, when he composed Paradise 
Lost f JSTot only low, but fallen from a 
height ; not only poor, but impoverish- 
ed ; in darkness and with dangers com- 
passed round, he sang his immortal song, 
and found fit audience, though few. Did 
not Cervantes finish his work, a maimed 
soldier, and in prison? Nay, was not 
the Araucana^ which Spain acknowl- 
edges as its Epic, written without even 
the aid of paper ; on scraps of leather, 
as the stout fighter and voyager snatch- 
ed any moment from that wild warfare ? 
And what then had these men, which 
Burns wanted ? Two things ; both which, 
it seems to us, are indispensable for such 
men. They had a true, religious princi- 
ple of morals ; and a single not a double 
aim in their activity. They were not 
self-seekers and self-worshippers ; but 



190 Life of Bicr7hs. 

seekers and worshippers of something 
far better than Self. ISTot personal en- 
joyment was their object; but a high, 
heroic idea of Keligion, of Patriotism, 
of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the other 
form, ever hovered before them ; in 
which cause, they neither shrunk from 
suffering, nor called on the earth to wit- 
ness it as something wonderful ; but pa- 
tiently endured, counting it blessedness 
enough so to spend and be spent. Thus 
the " golden calf of Self-love," however 
curiously carved, was not their Deity ; 
but the Invisible Goodness, which alone 
is man's reasonable service. This feel- 
ing was as a celestial fountain, whose 
streams refreshed into gladness and 
beauty all the provinces of their other- 
wise too desolate existence. In a word, 
they willed one thing, to which all other 
things were subordinated, and made sub- 
servient ; and therefore they accomplish- 
ed it. The wedge will rend rocks ; but 



Life of Burns. 191 

its edge must be sharp and single : if it 
be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces 
and will rend nothing. 

Part of this superiority these men 
owed to their age ; in which heroism 
and devotedness were still practised, or 
at least not yet disbelieved in ; but much 
of it likewise the}^ owed to themselves. 
With Burns again it was different. His 
morality, in most of its practical points, 
is that of a mere worldly man ; enjoy- 
ment, in a finer or a coarser shape, is the 
only thing he longs and. strives for. A 
noble instinct sometimes raises him 
above this ; but an instinct only, and 
acting only for moments. He has no 
Religion ; in the shallow age, where his 
days were cast, Religion was not discrim- 
inated from the N^ew and Old Lio-ht 

o 

forms of Religion ; and was, with these, 
becoming obsolete in the minds of men. 
His heart, indeed, is alive with a trem- 
bling adoration, but there is no temple 



192 Life of Burns. 

in his understanding. He lives in dark- 
ness and in the shadow of doubt. His 
religion, at best, is an anxious wish ; like 
that of Rabelais, " a great Perhaps." 

He loved Poetry warmly, and in his 
heart ; could he but have loved it purely, 
and with his whole undivided heart, it 
had been well. For Poetry, as Burns 
could have followed it, is but another 
form of Wisdom, of Religion ; is itself 
"Wisdom and Religion. But this also 
was denied him. His poetry is a stray 
vagrant gleam, which will not be ex- 
tinguished within him, yet rises not to be 
the true light of his path, but is often a 
wildfire that misleads him. It was not 
necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or 
to seem, "independent;^' but it was 
necessary for him to be at one with his 
own heart; to place what was highest 
in his nature, highest also in his life ; '' to 
seek within himself for that consistency 
and sequence, which external events 



-^i^^ ^f Burns. 193 

would for ever refuse him." He was 
born a poet; poetry was the celestial 
element of his being, and should have 
been the soul of his whole endeavors. 
Lifted into that serene ether, whither he 
had wings given him to mount, he would 
have needed no other elevation: Pov- 
erty, neglect, and all evil, save the 
desecration of himself and his Art, were 
a small matter to him ; the pride and the 
passions of the world lay far beneath his 
feet ; and he looked down alike on noble 
and slave, on prince and beggar, and all 
that wore the stamp of man, with clear 
recognition, with brotlierly affection, 
with sympathy, with pity. ISTay, we 
question whether for his culture as a 
Poet, poverty, and much suffering for 
a season, were not absolutely advanta- 
geous. Great men, in looking back 
over their lives, have testified to that 
effect. " I would not for much," says 
Jean Paul, "that I had been born 



194 Life of Bums. 

riclier." And yet Paul's birth was poor 
enough ; for, in another place, he adds ; 
" The prisoner's allowance is bread and 
water ; and I had often only the latter." 
But the gold that is refined in the hottest 
furnace comes out the purest ; or, as he 
has himself expressed it, " the canary- 
bird sings sweeter the longer it has been 
trained in a darkened cage." 

A man like Burns might have divided 
his hours between poetry and virtuous 
industry ; industry wdiich all true feeling 
sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has 
a beauty, for that cause, beyond the 
pomp of thrones : but to divide his hours 
between poetry and rich men's banquets, 
was an ill-starred and inauspicious at- 
tempt. How could he be at ease at 
such banquets? What had he to do 
there, mingling his music with the coarse 
roar of altogether earthly voices, and 
brightening the thick smoke of intoxica- 
tion with fire lent him from heaven ? Was 



Life of Burns. 195 

it his aim to en^oy life ? To-morrow he 
must go drudge as an Exciseman ! We 
wonder not that Burns became moody, 
indignant, and at times an offender 
against certain rules of society ; but 
rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, 
and run a-miick against them all. How 
could a man, so falsely placed, by his 
own or others' fault, ever know content- 
ment or peaceable diligence for an hour? 
What he did, under such perverse guid- 
ance, and what he forbore to do, alike 
fill us with astonishment at the natural 
strength and worth of his character. 

Doubtless there was a remedy for this 
perverseness : but not in others ; only 
in himself ; least of all in simple increase 
of wealth and worldly "respectability." 
We hope we have now heard enough 
about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, 
and to make poets happy, l^ay, have 
we not seen another instance of it in 
these very days ? Byron, a man of endow- 



196 Life of Burns. 

ment considerably less ethereal than that 
of Burns, is born in the rank not of a 
Scottish ploughman, but of an English 
peer: the highest worldly honors, the 
fairest worldly career, are his by inherit- 
ance: the richest harvest of fame he 
soon reaps, in another province, by his 
own hand. And what does all this avail 
him ? Is he happy, is he good, is he true ? 
Alas, he has a poet's soul, and strives 
towards the Infinite and the Eternal; 
and soon feels that all this is but mount- 
ing to the house-top to reach the stars ! 
Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; 
might like him have " 23urchased a pock- 
et-copy of Milton to study the character 
of Satan ;" for Satan also is Byron's 
grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, 
and the model apparently of his conduct. 
As in Burns's case, too, the celestial ele- 
ment will not mingle with the clay of 
earth ; both poet and man of the world 
he must not be ; vulgar Ambition will 



Life of Burns, 197 

not live kindly with poetic Adoration ; 
he cannot serve God and Mammon. 
Bjron, like Burns, is not happy ; nay, 
he is the most wretched of all men. His 
life is falsely arranged : the fire that is 
in him is not a strong, still, central fire, 
warming into beauty the products of a 
world ; but it is the mad fire of a vol- 
cano ; and now, — we look sadly into the 
ashes of a crater, which ere long, will fill 
itself with snow ! 

Byron and Burns were sent forth as 
missionaries to their generation, to teach 
it a higher doctrine, a purer truth : they 
had a message to deliver, which left 
them no rest till it was accomplished ; in 
dim throes of pain, this divine behest lay 
smouldering within them ; for they knew 
not what it meant, and felt itonly in mys- 
terious anticipation, and they had to die 
without articulately uttering it. They are 
in the camp of the Unconverted. Yet not 
as high messengers of rigorous though be- 



198 Life of Burns. 

nignant truth, but as soft flattering sing- 
ers, and in pleasant fellowship, will they 
live there ; they are first adulated, then 
persecuted; they accomplish little for 
othere ; they find no peace for themselves, 
but only death and the peace of the 
grave. We confess, it is not without a 
certain mournful awe that we view the 
fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, 
yet ruined to so little purpose with all 
their gifts. It seems to us there is a stern 
moral taught in this piece of history, 
— twice told us in our own time ! Surely 
to men of like genius, if there be any 
such, it carries with it a lesson of deep 
impressive significance. Surely it would 
become such a man, furnished for the 
highest of all enterprises, that of being 
the Poet of his Age, to consider well what 
it is that he attempts, and in what spirit 
he attempts it. For the words of Milton 
are true in all times, and were neveir 
truer than in this : " He, who would write 



Life of Burns. 199 

heroic poems, must make his whole life 
a heroic poem." If he cannot first so 
make his life, then let him hasten from 
this arena ; for neither its lofty glories, 
nor its fearful perils, are for him. Let 
him dwindle into a modish balladmon- 
ger ; let him worship and be-sing the 
idols of the time, and the time will not 
fail to reward him, — if, indeed, he can 
endure to live in that capacity ! Byron 
and Burns could not live as idol-priests, 
but the fire of their own hearts consum- 
ed them ; and better it was for them 
that they could not. For it is not in the 
favor of the great, or of the small, but 
in a life of truth, and in the inexpugna- 
ble citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's 
or a Burns's strength must lie. Let the 
great stand aloof from him, or know how 
to reverence him. Beautiful is the 
union of wealth with favor and further- 
ance for literature ; like the costliest 
flower-jar enclosing the loveliest amar- 



200 Life of Burns. 

anth. Yet let not the relation be mis- 
taken. A true poet is not one whom 
they can hire by money or flattery to be 
a minister of their pleasures, their writer 
of occasional verses, their purveyor of 
table-wit ; he cannot be their menial, he 
cannot even be their partisan. At the 
peril of both parties, let no such union be 
attempted ! Will a Courser of the Sun 
work softly in the harness of a Dray- 
horse? His hoofs are of fire, and his 
path is through the heavens, bringing 
light to all lands; will he lumber on 
mud highways, dragging ale for earthly 
appetites, from door to door ? 

But we mnst stop short in these con- 
siderations, which would lead us to 
boundless ]eno:ths. We had somethius^ 
to say on the public moral character of 
Burns ; but this also we must forbear. 
We are far from regarding him as guil- 
ty before the world, as guiltier than the 
average ; nay, from doubting that he is 



Life of Bihvns. 201 

less guilty than one of ten tliousand. 
Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than 
that where the PleMscita of common 
civic reputations are pronounced, he has 
seemed to us even there less worthy of 
blame than of pity and wonder. But 
the world is habitually unjust in its 
judgments of such men ; unjust on many 
grounds, of which this one may be stat- 
ed as the substance : it decides, like a 
court of law, by dead statutes ; and not 
positively but negatively ; less on what 
is done right, than on what is, or is not, 
done wrong. Not the few inches of re- 
flection from the mathematical orbit, 
which are so easily measured, but the 
i^atio of these to the w^hole diameter, 
constitutes the real aberration. This 
orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the 
breadth of the solar system ; or it may 
be a city hippodrome ; nay, the circle 
of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of 
feet or paces. But the inches of de- 



202 Life of B 



urns. 



flection only are measured; and it is 
assumed that the diameter of the gin- 
horse, and that of the planet, will 
yield the same ratio when compared 
with them. Here lies the root of many 
a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, 
Swifts, Eousseaus, which one never lis- 
tens to with approval. Granted, the 
ship comes into harbor with shrouds 
and tackle damaged ; and the pilot is 
therefore blameworthy ; for he has not 
been all-w^ise and all-powerful; but to 
know how blameworthy, tell us first 
whether his voyage has been round the 
Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle 
of Dogs. 

With our readers in general, w^ith men 
of right feeling anywhere, we are not 
required to plead for Burns. In pitying 
admiration, he lies enshrined in all our 
hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than 
that one of marble; neither will his 
Works, even as they are, pass away 



Life of Burns. 203 


from the memory of man. While the 


Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like 


mighty rivers through the country of 


Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and 


assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves ; 


this little Yalclusa Fountain will also 


arrest our eye : for this also is of Na- 


ture's own and most cunning workman- 


ship, bursts from the depths of the 


earth, with a full gushing current, into 


the light of day; and often will the 


traveller turn aside to drink of its clear 


waters, and muse among its rocks and 


pines ! 


THE END. 



